A walk on the heath

This weekend we had very little planned other than doing work (Matt) and applying for jobs (Grace). Saturday was a very nice sunny day in the 50's so we decided to take a walk in Hampstead Heath. It was not quite warm enough to laze on our picnic blanket, and we needed to get used to our hiking boots and prepare a bit for next weekend, when we are going to visit our friends who live outside of Leeds, in the heart of Yorkshire Dales. The Yorkshire Dales are a national park and 'region of scenic beauty'. The word 'dale' means 'valley'. This is just south of the region of barren heather moors made famous in such books as Wuthering Heights. We plan on doing a lot of hill walking that weekend, so we were trying to train up a bit.

Everything was fine but one of the first things we did when we got to the Heath was try to ford a small stream which turned out to have banks of very wet mud. Matt with his long legs was able to jump right over all this. I ended up with my boots and jeans sunk 4 inches deep in wet sucking mud. Here's what it looked like after stopping at a public restroom to attempt to clean up a bit:



Here's how I felt about the situation:



Other than that we had a nice little walk. The Heath is very hilly, so good preparation for the Yorkshire Dales. We went up to the top of 'Kite Hill' which is where everyone comes with their kites on a windy day. There were some very high-techy kites flown by adults and they were taking up most of the space. This left some of the smaller kids, on the edges of the hill where the wind was not as strong, in a stream of tears because their kites would not fly.

Early in the morning we had made pancakes as a Saturday morning treat and we had lots of leftovers, so we brought them to have lunch in the park. We sat on a tree stump and ate plain pancakes with our fingers and drank a Coke. Not the healthiest lunch, I suppose. Matt kept joking that he wished we would run into someone we knew, so he could say, 'Hey, how're you doing? Want a pancake?'

By this time I think we were very dehydrated and we both had a touch of a headache from being in the bright sunlight. We thought we should probably head home, drink plenty of water and take a nap. But instead we went to the pub and had a pint and a plate of chips/fries. It was a very carby day--pancakes for breakfast, pancakes and Coke for lunch, chips/fries and beer.