Grand Tour of England Day 17

After a lovely relaxed breakfast with Bev and Tim the start of our drive was not auspicious. When Mr C started the van the step would not retract. He put it up on the blocks to investigate and found the motor had got disconnected from the step. Tim got some wire which held the step in place but the grinding noise of the motor trying to retract it was continuous so the switch that turned the motor off had to be jammed.

Eventually we were off. They had told us of a nice 1 hour walk at an RSPB place at Arne so we headed off there. Of course miles were not many but the traffic meant it took longer than expected. The parking was £7. It’s a good cause so we bit the bullet and had a nice woodland walk which eventually gave us views over Poole Harbour, Brownsea Island and over to Purbeck.

This was the only place we’d been to with no 4G or google map access so it required a phone call to Marian to get directions to her new hone. It was so nice to see her after 5 years. Last time we did the Dorchester race for life. Now she has moved from Corfe Castle to Wool and we parked up in her drive. Her son, a consultant surgeon, is staying with her as his US visa has not come through and his job there is due to start soon. We heard a lot of interesting stuff about Covid being here in December, lack of PPE and all the other stories confirmed.

Mr C needed a rest after the stress of the driving, socialising etc so he had a snooze after lunch while Marian and I had a very squelchy walk through woods to heathland and back through an even bigger quagmire. It was warm and sunny all day, but there had been lots of rain earlier. Almost 20000 steps today.

Her partner Brian arrived after sailing and we had a jolly drink in the garden before dinner. Hopefully we’ll can reciprocate if their planned holiday house in Richmond does not fall through again.