Train rides, however short, are always exciting. Evie generally spends about 2 seconds looking out of the window (see below) and then the rest of the time alternating between attempting to run the length of the train and attempting to crawl around on the completely filthy floors and under seats. I go into a semi-catatonic state and Jim deals with the situation, usually.
The battle of wills over the wearing of the sunhat is a constant theme in our lives these days. Although she is very, very enthusiastic about sunscreen (because when we put sunscreen on that means we're about to go outside), Evie makes a huge effort to lose her hat during every outing. Here, I attempt to put the hat in a positive light by modeling it. That tactic did not work.
Jim and Evie acted as our guides during our country walk. In addition to learning that we should pay attention to the seasons mentioned in the book, we also probably should have maybe checked when the book was published. In this case, the book was published in 2005...and a lot of the landmarks we were looking for were either not there or had changed considerably. So the trusty guides had their work cut out for them.
We made it safely through the first kissing gate:
Across the first field:
and safely over the first stile:
As a side note, it is not easy to hoist yourself over a stile when you are about 15 pounds heavier than you used to be. Lucky for me, most of the stiles had been replaced by kissing gates, so I only had to haul myself over a few of them.It was a warm day for England and I'm extra warm all the time, so I attempted to keep cool by adopting a Dukes of Hazard look for pregnant women while we were walking. Here I am baring it all at 22 weeks pregnant (insert wolf whistle)! When Evie turned around and saw me she yelled, "BABY!!!" At least it's clear that I'm pregnant now...even to Evie.
Nothing makes you walk faster than the sizzle of live electricity going through giant pylons above your head. And talking about what would happen to you if one of them were to fall while you were walking underneath it also gets you moving.
There is lots of naturally occurring chalk in the Chilterns, and I decided to demonstrate how well it works on a falling down stile. I can hear my mom's voice saying "fools names and fools faces always appear in public places." Oh well. We brought our piece of chalk home, so Evie can use it to graffiti our back garden.
Just before the next picture was taken, we made a detour on a path through the woods that, in retrospect, we are pretty sure we weren't supposed to take. In the process of walking on said path AND attempting to avoid the masses of nettles that were obscuring most of it, I managed to step off the path and slip down right into a huge patch of them. For the record, this was not a jarring fall, but more like just sat down so there is no need to worry! At this point, I was still in Dukes of Hazard mode AND ended up on my back...a position that I struggle to get out of without rolling over onto my side (not something I wanted to do in a patch of nettles with my shirt pulled up), so, like a turtle stuck on its back, I had to lie in the nettles until Jim and Evie could get back to pull me out. Then I had to endure about ten minutes of painful stinging on my back. Only after the incident did someone mention that the antidote to stinging nettles--Dock Weed?--always grows alongside of the nettles. Next time!!!Here are Evie and Jim in a field of wheat and poppies after the nettle incident.
It's hard to go on a country walk without walking through at least one herd of animals. This time it was some curious cows. You can tell Evie was really enjoying the smell.
We were very excited to reach a village with some pubs. We were hungry and thirsty and needed to refill our water bottles and, in Evie's case, to stretch her legs.
The first pub was a little seedy, but also had ponies, chickens, ducks and fish! Evie attempted to ditch her hat by throwing it into the water with the ducks and fish, but Jim quickly found a long stick and rescued it. Despite her country experiences, Evie still is an urban girl and was not very interested in having the cute and friendly ponies anywhere near her. She consented to look at them while safely in my arms.
Having concluded that we didn't want to eat lunch at this pub, we headed on to the next one, which was much nicer AND had some steam powered machines stopped in front of it on their way out of town after a steam rally. Very cool! We watched them drive off and they blew their whistles as they left.
Having a drink. Somehow DouDou convinced us to bring him along with us. We almost lost him about six times as well:
Alas, we did not finish the walk, but did make it about 6 or 7 miles before we gave up and got a taxi to the Amersham train station. Everyone was tired, but it was a successful outing and gave us the confidence to start walking again...well, at least for a couple of more months.
By the way, we discovered that the camera battery was dead upon getting onto the train, so all of the pictures in this blog were taken with my iphone. Not so shabby!
