welsh hills again

So here we are on day five of the sixteen day "firebreak lockdown" in Wales.  The main difference for us from the local lockdown which preceded it is that we are no longer allowed to meet other people even outside and the small opening up which had led to yoga and pilates classes restarting has been withdrawn.  In some ways this is fine.    It is quite a short period of time and if it helps to stem the rising number of cases then it could be worthwhile.   Let us hope so.  In some ways it is far from fine.  We were not seeing many people, really only our locally living daughter and her family and some very close local friends, but we miss them.  And I am intensely missing our further away family, children and grandchildren, in South Wales, Manchester and Devon, who we have not seen properly for months.  Rain and darker evenings don't help either!  I just want to sit round a table with those that I love and eat delicious food and drink wine and laugh and tell stories.  I wa

Today I found myself struggling to remember exactly what I had done this week and I realised that one effect for me of this protracted period of lockdown and semi lockdown is that the weeks blur into each other.  Tomorrow we are expecting an announcement to the effect that there will be what is being called a circuit breaker lockdown in Wales, a shorter period (but exactly how long?) of serious restrictions in an attempt to reverse the trend of rising infections and hospitalisations. So in this week's blog I am going to pin down exactly what I have been doing over the last seven days to try to stop the weeks blurring into months! Sunday 11th October I went for a run about lunchtime and in the afternoon younger daughter and all her family (the only part of our family within reach at the moment as they live in the same county) came to spend the afternoon with us.  It was a lovely day, warm enough to sit outside, as we must right now.  We have two horse chestnut trees and much of the

 Last time I blogged I said we were on the Welsh Government's Amber list up here which meant that the numbers of coronavirus cases were rising and a return to more restrictions was possible.  Well on 1st October at 6pm local restrictions were imposed here in Flintshire and also in the neighbouring counties in North Wales of Denbighshire, Conwy and Wrexham.  This means that we are not supposed to cross the county boundaries unless for a "reasonable excuse" such as travelling for work or for a medical appointment.  Living as we do very close to the border with Denbighshire that has meant a change in our normal shopping habits so we are now going eastward to Mold rather than west to Denbigh or south to Ruthin.    A greater impact has been made by the suspension of the "extended household" rules which now means we cannot meet anyone inside from outside our own household of two.  So our weekly meet up with friends has disappeared for now which I am missing.  I am als