daytime

Sunday, 26 January 2014

26th January 2014.

Dear All,

A couple of muddy walks this week as I did a recce with a couple of colleagues on Monday and the normal walk on Thursday. On Monday the walk started at Abbots Ripton home of the De Ramsey family. The family name is Fellowes and the author of Downton Abbey is part of thedynasty and lives nearby. They own 6,000 acres which is the whole of the village and some more. It was a decent walk with spectacular views to the north with nearly all the heavy land ploughed but not sown.

The Abbots Elms

Abbots Ripton Estate

The second instalment of “Eat, Drink and be Healthy” covered food basics including food types, sources and uses. Sugar consumption is now 35-50 times it was a 100 years ago.

In the afternoon we attended the U3A film which was “The White Ribbon” It was filmed in black & white. The setting was the fictitious Protestant village of Eichwald,Germany, from July 1913 to 9 August 1914, where the local pastor, the doctor and the baron rule the roost over the area's women, children and peasant farmers. There are several strange unexplained violent incidents which perhaps explain the build up to the 1^st WW.

Kate is in decorating mood for Esther’s old room so we went to B&Q and Homebase on Wednesday for supplies. In the afternoon we attended the U3A Wednesday lecture entitled “Why aren’t we all fat?” by Stephen O’Rahilly who is a local expert. In our lifetime we drink 42 tons of water and eat 3 tons of fat, 3 tons of protein and 8 tons of carbohydrate. Your BMI is up to 75% genetic.

On Thursday we started at Dry Drayton in the rain and proceeded to Knapwell and Bar Hill discovering some mud but it could have been worse.

Sticky Start

We drove down to Hove in the afternoon. The M25 was sluggish so we took 3 hours arriving about 7 pm. Ericsson are transferring much of their accounting to Dusseldorf and Andy has to go for at least a year so this will disrupt their life for a while.

On Friday we took Amélie to storytime at the Library then Arundel Wildlife Centre. It was well laid out with a range of ducks and other water birds. There was a small electric inflatable boat ride where we saw a couple of water voles.