Reasons to be Cheerful: Nostalgia, Fells and Garden #R2BC

It is the end of August today (where has this month gone?) so I will be handing back over the lovely Michelle for September as the hostess with the mostest. I will still be joining in and visiting you all though to watch out! Here are my reasons to be cheerful this week:
1) Nostalgia
One of the great things about sorting out and completely rearranging a bedroom is that it produces lots of treasures from the past. This week one thing that emerged was my whole school photograph from Beaconsfield High School in the summer of 1987 - the year I took the last ever O level exams. There were 800 of us at the school at the time and they lined us up in form by height and then merged us in our year group as we went onto the school field. I have just photographed my Year 5 section (what year 11 used to be called!). Can you find me?

2) Tail Walking at Parkrun
My son and I volunteered to be Tail Walkers at Fell Foot. This is a fun role at the back of the event keeping the walkers company on the 5 km route. This time we started with a gentleman in his 80s who used to run marathons but is now on doctor's orders to only walk. It was lovely to stroll through the park and meadow chatting to him and encouraging other runners as they passed or lapped us. Plenty of time to take photographs too. Then he stopped at the end of lap 1 to be with his daughter an we had to leg it over a kilometre to catch the young runner who was now the tail:

#WordOfTheWeek Garden

When I looked out of my bedroom this morning my garden looked like this:

Basically for the last few months I have barely had time to mow the lawn let alone weed or trim the hedge (not that I have the right equipment!). Luckily for me some other members of my family are much more green-fingered than me and they are equipped for virtually any garden work. They came round after breakfast and with me achieved:

•  2 weeded borders
• a mown lawn with all grass to the back trimmed
• a hedge tamed to a reasonable size
• old guinea pig run removed
• hardcore from previous tenants removed

It was just as well it was green bin day and they don't collect until lunch time as we filled 2.5 green wheelie bins (thanks to the neighbours!) and still had all of this to take to the tip:

It was lovely to look out of my window after lunch and see the transformed view:

So much more space and somewhere you would actually want to sit out in! Still things to do and next up is to relocate the compost bins right up to the back out of the way... watch this space...

#CountryKids Glenridding and Ullswater

We had friends visiting Cumbria from the south coast and when I had to think of somewhere to meet up I suggested Glenridding on the shores of Ullswater. Its part of the Lake District I have barely been to and I wanted to go again. So my son and I had the fun of Kirkstone Pass, the highest pass open to motor vehicles in Cumbria, with twisty roads and up to 1:4 inclines to get there! We met up at St Patrick's Boat Landing and over coffee my friends suggested a row on the lake...

The water was pretty smooth and as the only big vessels are the steamers its a pretty safe body of water to be out and about on. It did help that my friend was an experienced oarsman who safely got us past the restored Steamer Pier:

There were quite a few people out enjoying the water despite the lack of wind for sailing:

The red sailed boat did seem to manage OK and added to lots of my photographs like this of the Inn on the Lake:

#CountryKids Virtual Vikings, Waterpark Fun, Windy Beaches and Rugged Coasts

After our busy history day we went for more of a fun-filled one and headed back down to Waterford to visit the King of the Vikings which is the world's visit virtual reality Viking encounter: 

As there are only 8 people in the attraction at a time we had to book and then wander around admiring the mix of modern and Georgian architecture around the Anglican cathedral:

We even had time for a very happy coffee:

#FitnessFriday A Step in the Right Direction

So its time to see how I have done since last Friday when I committed to losing the weight  had put back on and running more! First up how is the 1000 km challenge going:

So that's another 25 km achieved and I am now only 119 km behind instead 122. I can still do this as I had worked out I needed to run 3.67 km a day for the rest of the year so with a few longer runs to make up for missed days I will earn that medal...

What about the rest of my fitness plan?

1) Diet

I have been increasing the amount of fruit and vegetables in my diet as I wasn't hitting the 5 day. Have to admit its probably more fruit than veg though... This week I also ate oily fish a few times at lunch with both tuna and smoked salmon as I know I have been missing out on this type of food. A good lunch looked like this: