A pleasantly relaxing weekend

14th & 15th November

Yesterday morning we were feeling a lack of exercise and incipient cabin fever, always a risk at this time of year. Sheila spent a bit of time checking out the possibilities of the local geocaches. Many of them didn’t sound particularly enticing, but there was one near Poynton Pool which would give us an excuse to visit somewhere we’d heard of several times but never got round to visiting.

Accordingly, we got togged up and walked down Anson Road, Middlewood Road and Park Lane to the nearest Co-op, where we bought a newspaper, a lettuce and a head of broccoli. This last was an impulse buy, but I’m sure it will come in handy.

The Garmin promptly told us to reverse our route back to Tower Road and we walked along there for a short distance before finding an alternate, more or less parallel footpath. This actually took us rather out of our way but still made a very pleasant walk, which was after all the point of the exercise. At the end we opted for another footpath going approximately in the right direction and after some steady tramping found ourselves at the far end of Tower Road.

From there it was but a short distance to the parkland which surrounds Poynton Pool (or Lake, depending on which map you read). The cache was easily found, which made a change for a 35mm film canister, and we set off back under threatening skies. The Garmin helped us identify a field path which eventually led to Princes Incline, from where we knew our way home after previous forays finding caches along it. The total walk came to just over six miles.

Tired but pleased with ourselves, we got back to the boat just in time for lunch and to avoid the rainstorm which filled the afternoon. We were more than happy to spend the rest of the day in the boat. We have a list of tasks which need to be done over the next couple of weeks, and we’re steadily working our way through them.

Today has been much quieter. I went out to get a paper in pleasant sun this morning, but otherwise we’ve stayed on board, varying our time between reading the paper, proofreading and researching living wills, or lasting powers of attorney as they are called now. They seem like a good idea but the form filling is quite substantial and involves tracking down a number of different people whose signatures are required to make the thing legal.

Then you have to register the fact that you’ve done it with the Office of the Public Guardian at a price of £120 per LPA. Since you need to do two each (one for financial matters and one for health issues) it’s the best part of £500 for the two of us. Oh, and if you make a mistake on the form they send it back and you have to pay another fee to resubmit it. All this to avoid a lot more hassle should one of us become legally incompetent. (I’ll leave the jokes for Mr Millin to make.)

Most of the day has felt much more cheerful. Many of the photos for next year’s family calendar have been identified, and routine IT housekeeping like backups done, as well as a more mundane sort of housekeeping, namely changing the bed.

We’re looking forward to a fairly quiet week next week, in terms of activity if not the weather.