and with the solstice at the weekend, i guess that means its officially summer!

I've had a fairly quiet week so far this week. On Monday, apart from the usual laundry and food shopping i mostly spent time exploring where my current short story actually goes from where i've taken it so far. I have a destination, i've just not decided on the route to get there!

Tuesday i had more of a plan of action. A short, 50km, ride to Bath with a bit of an explore of some of the steeper city streets - we are talking upwards of 20% before meeting up with Bev for a bacon sarnie and the ride back. Next up it was prep for this week's trip, packing Foxy for travel, making sure i had all the camping gear and packing that too - it feels like it weighs a ton but i know that its actually only about 20kg all up. Then i set to on the garden, cropping cherries, blackcurrants, gooseberries and raspberries before a bout of weeding.

My efforts continued with cooking tea which we followed with ice cream and some of those freshly picked cherries. At a guess we've had about 2kg of cherries, a few sticks of rhubarb and about another 2kg of the other soft fruit - the blackberries haven't quite started yet and the plums are only just starting to ripen.

The more vegetable type stuff is coming along, potatoes, string beans, broad beans, peas, onions, swedes, tomatoes, cucumbers, pumpkins, lettuce and eggplant are in the mix too. We haven't planted as many legumes this year and the onions are a bit disappointing but its the journey that counts right?

And today? Well laundry of course then more weeding ahead of my trip. I've had a short, 2km walk, sat in the sun for half an hour and this afternoon i'll pack the rest of the stuff for my trip - the forecast is for high 20's c so not so much gear needed.

Ah yes, the trip. Well i head up to Leeds by coach tomorrow, to my daughters place where i have a bike to build, a present for my GS, rebuild Foxy and get the kids organised for the weekend. Friday i'll ride across to York, the kids will come across by public transport later on. Due to work and school, they'll head back to Leeds Sunday afternoon, i'll stay Sunday night then ride back over on Monday, Foxy will get repacked then, the plan is atm, i'll get the bus back to Sheffield on Tuesday.

I'm looking forward to it with a little trepidation, the kids haven't done any tent camping before - my daughter was spoilt with caravans and hotels, GS hasn't even done a caravan before. So two nights barely an hour from home is a safe-ish start. As i mentioned last Sunday, as a result there won't be a Sunday post but things should be back to normal for Wednesday.

I still haven't quite worked out the next bit of the new story, hopefully that will be remedied before my next post which i expect to be next Wednesday.

I'll leave you there, so until next time, thanks for reading,
Tschussie,
Madeline Anafrid