Easter Part 3; Chocolate Eggs; Chocolate Bunnies; Roaming the Ercall

The time has come, the song is over...  

I'm back at work, ruing the one inevitable mantra in life, "I work to live".  It has been so long that I last had a proper break away from things, and these past 10 days have been just what was needed.  Things got a little wet and miserable towards the end of the week after our trip to Wales, so a lot of time was spent sitting, reading, eating, and feeling generally lazy.  We deserve such things in life though.  Only in small doses.

We took some time out over the weekend to take Olive out of the house to Park Hall Farm in Oswestry.  It was a nice setting, with a great variety of animals, and lots of activities for her to get involved in.  My highlight was the pig racing, which brought back memories of similar events at the Brocklesby Fair when I was younger.  Olive's was feeding the lambs, stroking the bunnies, and her reward for her Easter egg hunt.

This didn't last long... her Mum swiftly finished it

I didn't think rabbits got this big

On the Sunday, I was supposed to go out, and do a 16km run.  I was feeling a little lazy, the weather was bad, and I don't really know the Telford area well enough to come up with such a distance easily... so I gave it a miss.  I made up for it when it cleared a little later in the day, by taking a walk around a couple of landmarks in the Telford countryside, the Wrekin, and the Ercall.

The Wrekin from the Ercall

I believe I have mentioned the Wrekin before in a previous run.  I often come up here when I need my own space, and pretty much know the place like the back of my hand.  What I often omit is the neighbouring 'Ercall', which is a disused quarry, and is now set aside as a place of international geological importance.

The Ercall

The Ercall is significant to geologists, due to the cross cutting formation in the rock that was discovered through quarrying in the area

A closer view of the rock formation in the Ercall

What the rock formations show are on the right, diagonal layers of sedimentary Wrekin quartzite rock, that shows similar rippled patterns to those in shallow seas today.  The more orange Ercall granophyre on the left shows the shift from volcanic to sedimentary rock with a layer of unconformity in between.

The significance of this, for geologists, is it displays a change in the earths structure.  It also displays evidence where before the change life was once aquatic in a form that couldn't create fossils, afterwards fossils become evident showing how creatures began to create harder features.  All this between 520 and 560 million years ago.

All rather interesting stuff, so long as you're not a creationist.  Regardless to beliefs, on a nicer day, I reckon it could all look rather stunning under the right light.  My day out, the murky weather, and my camera did this site no justice.

Time to crack on with some work.

Nice Weather; Easy Running; Olive, and her Didicar

With the sides off of Olive's bed now, we are starting to get used to the early morning wake up call.  We don't mind to some extent, as she's quite good at getting into our room about 5-10 minutes before the alarm makes its noise.  Yet, on the weekend, we kind of got used to getting up when we were ready, and fetching her at our convenience.  This is, and forever shall be, no more.

It was the usual drill of taking Olive swimming first thing in the morning; have a play with her friends for 30 minutes after; meet her Mum; go shopping (Olive stayed awake on this occasion, so I had to endure 'the supermarket').  It was at this point, once home, I thought we could let Olive have her sleep, and I could go out for a 16.5km run.  As it happened, Olive didn't have her sleep, and I had a very slow 17.5km in 1:43:22.  I must confess I did spend a lot of time enjoying the run, so not caring about pace, as well as get reacquainted with some old friends of ours who used to live next door to the Woodlands Farm on Shooters Hill.

The route is one of my favourites, as it predominantly follows the Green Chain Walk, through  woodland, parks, and beside paddocks.  All in all, on a beautiful day, it's nice to get off the road, and see the greener side to London.

I started off running up to the top of Shooters Hill, which is marked by a water tower on the top.  From here, I always run into the park surrounding Oxleas Wood, and head through into Eltham Wood, and Eltham Park North, then Eltham Park South.

Oxleas Cafe at the entrance to Oxleas Meadows

Looking back towards the cafe; water tower; and Oxleas woods

Pond in Eltham Park North

From here, it's a case of following the Green Chain Walk, along towards Eltham Palace.  Unfortunately, I failed to get a good picture of the place as I was running alongside the moat that surrounds it.

I did run past the original water supply system to the palace.  It's an interesting structure, and sits with its pride of place.  I am surprised it doesn't show too many signs of vagrancy.

Some of the nice housing around Eltham Palace

Once past Eltham Palace, there are tons of paddocks.  I wasn't able to get too close to any of the horses.  I did come across some old friends of Olives.  These donkey's are used to do rides at Blackheath, outside the entrance to Greenwich Park.  They used to live in a paddock next door to Woodlands Farm, but have since been moved due to a project for the Olympic legacy.

The plans are to build an equestrian centre in its place.  There has been little support for this project, as it will be an elitist sport introduced to a non-elitist area.  It will also impact upon the farm no doubt as construction goes underway, and it has already impacted on the lives of these Donkey's who used to live there.  I was glad to read in a local newspaper they were re-housed here, and to see them again was nice to get some photo's to show Olive when I get home.



Just as inquisitive as ever





They get a lot of space, and a long view of the city

After this, it was a case of getting past half way, running through Avery Park, back into Eltham Woods, up Shooters Hill, and home, where I had a nice surprise waiting for me.

Avery Hill Park

Oxleas Wood

Eltham Woods, not far to go

I found these two on my door step

After this, I decided to take Olive out for a walk, and for her to use her Didicar.  This was a Christmas present.  If you haven't come across one, it's a car where you can make it move, just by turning the steering wheel.  It does work, but when you live on a hill, gravity comes to effect, it's not easy to go up hill, unless you invest a lot of leg effort, but coming down, well, that's well worth the going up.  I took her to Shrewsbury Hill Park and Woods, at the top of our road.  There we had a nice walk and run around, then the great ride home.

Olive was enjoying playing on her Didicar

I wasn't able to take a picture, but if we do this again soon as a family, I want to get videos of this.  The Didicar is designed to be used by adults, at the same time if need be.  I couldn't resist, but push the boundaries.  Just how far could I take the poor girl?  The truth was, there is a nice little slope at the top of our road with a footpath that kind of slaloms down.  She was screaming to "go faster Daddy," so I was in luck that I didn't scare her. 

I will wear shoes that I don't mind ruining next time.



All in the name of play.





Reflections of a Night Pass

All has been well today.  Well.  Well?  Well, that is kind of one word to describe events.

I got to bed at about 1:30am last night (this morning to the pedantic amongst you), and Olive thought 7am was a decent enough hour to get us up.  Knowing Mrs. Banks had been on the sauce last night, and she wasn't even home by the time I went to bed, I feared for the worst.  The usual thoughts filtered through the mind of whether to treat this rare turning of the tables in the kind, husbandry (in sickness, and in health) way, or to milk the situation, and watch her suffer.

Always one for the quiet life, yet still tests the boundaries, I elected for a combination of the two.  This was simply keep Olive occupied, and sport the knowing grin whenever presented with an opportunity.  She's still asleep as I type this, and I'm thinking of bed.

Keeping Olive occupied involved a trip out to Glovers Farm in Kent.  They have a farm shop, and sold me a decent Rib Eye steak a few months back, so I thought I'd keep the money local (they're about 15miles away from home), and find something decent for a valentines meal.  I'll keep this one back for the time being, on the off chance that she reads this blog for once.

Once home, Olive and I decided to interact some more as a family.  Although Mummy had migrated to the couch, there was little more communication than the repetitive opening and closing of the mouth, not too dissimilar to a goldfish.  Consequently, Olive wanted to watch the Rugby, then head out to see more animals.

A bit of an overview of Maryon Wilson Park.  Olive is the tiny explorer

Maryon Wilson Park was where we headed to.  It's situated bang in the middle of Charlton, and has an undulating terrain, coupled with some little woods, and an Animal Care Centre.  The Care Centre, is a nicely set up place.  They offer plenty of space to animals they keep on site.  Most animals are of the farmyard variety, and they also keep deer in a separate enclosure. 

Olive loves the Deer, or Reindeer as calls them after Christmas

At certain times of the day, they do have an educational period where children can interact with the animals, and feed them their special diets etc.  We have never been able to do this yet.  Mainly because I never learn when they do it specifically, but I do know it's always on a school day, and being an occupational sort. that's not going to happen.

Olive and Dude spot the Deer

Olive does love it here, so with her little doll (She's called Dude), we went for a walk around.  They do pretty much have any farm animal you can think of, and Olive loves to think which one she wants to see next, as she's shouting "Cock-a-Doodle-Doo!" at the plethora of foul on offer.

An idea of the birds in house.  There are sheep; pigs; goats; horses to name a few others

The evening got a little more interesting.  Once I got Olive to bed, let Julia sleep some more, I decided to go through some emails, and write up the Maryon Wilson Park adventure.  Then I came across this:

How the mollyfock did that get in there, at that hour?  The answer was easy to come by, yet difficult to face

I am, to use a word, speechless.  Yes, speechless.  I can type out words, but I can't use all the ones that are filtering through my noggin' and failing to form in my mouth.

What can I say?  I hate Amsterdam.  I've been there on several occasions now, never liked it one bit, and always see it as a test of endurance.  I'll be heading off there again, and there's no doubt about it... 26 miles of running anywhere, is a test of endurance, and I'll be doing it there.  I even vowed to never set foot in that city again, so long as I live.

I even missed out on a 16.5km run today because of fatherly duties.  I'll be stewing over all of this, when I run into work tomorrow, and lay plans to facing my fears in the Amsterdam Marathon in October.

I blame the moderate consumption of whisky last night.  I know anyone will only say I have myself to blame.

I'm an idiot.

Be nice.  The truth hurts.