Life: February 2024 Fresh Air & Reading

Axmouth

February is silly season at work and this year has been exceptionally stressful with very long and some anti-social hours. Hence the reason there has been absolutely no sewing this month.

Axmouth

Walking

However, I have tried to keep on with getting outside regularly for fresh air and walks. A couple of notable ones have been:

Parke, near Bovey Tracey

This is National Trust land and the estate encompasses a number of walks around the valley of the River Bovey. We opted for the medium purple route which took us an hour, and we are reasonably paced walkers who didn't stop.

The sound of the fast running water was very calming. There is also an excellent café on site where we sat and shared a slice of Persian Love Cake.

Holyford Woods Nature Reserve, Seaton

After a quick lunch in Seaton, we headed back up to the top of the hill to walk to Holyford Woods Nature Reserve. You can park near the petrol station on the way into Seaton and after carefully crossing the road, the nature reserve is accessed from a short walk down a field. The walk is approximately 3km circular walk which is quite muddy underfoot.

We didn't see another soul, but embraced the quiet and sound of birds (Merlin app identified them as blue tits, robins and blackbirds).

Reading

Just the two books read during February.

The Knowledge: How to Rebuild our World From Scratch by Lewis Dartnell

This was written pre-Covid and is a handbook for recreating life after an apocalypse. It is less interested in the first few years of living hand to mouth, but more so in the detailed knowledge of chemistry and mechanics etc to regain any semblance of life as we know it now. However, I was probably hoping more for the prosaic simpler life tips so it didn't live up to my expectations.

Untold Stories by Alan Bennett

Everyone loves Alan Bennett, don't they? He is a national treasure with his gentle northern voice which you can hear in everything he writes. It was a whopper of a book at over 600 pages but as always with Alan, a really interesting combination of diaries, essays and stories.

Love Mrs Jones x