Beer in Malvern, with a view!

A few days at mum’s before our next sit for Sooty, our longest standing charge. We chipped away at the garden, filling the recycling bin, well a good reason to stop anyway, apart from getting caught in two downpours. Haircut for me, ear syringing for Brian (no, it hasn’t made much difference) and Sunday lunch.

Arrived at Abi’s on Tuesday, seven years we’ve been coming here, amazing. Sooty is showing her age a little but still shows us lots of love, she really is the sweetest cat and has taken to spending the night on one or other of our pillows. We had a good catch up with Abi before going out to dinner and packing her off to her mum for an early start to Wales.

Just look at sweet little Sooty cat

Rose Bank Gardens, Malvern

It is like coming home, Sooty knows and loves us and we do take the opportunity to catch up with people and ‘life maintenance’. Brian has been for his annual clinical genetics study at the prostate clinic, and we’ve been to Malvern to see the friend of a friend osteopath to look at Brian’s knee. He reckoned it wasn’t a bad knee, try a brace, you might even be able to run again. Brian is obviously delighted, particularly having found the recommended brace on eBay for less than a third the retail price.

Catching up with old friends from Solihull Mountaineering Club. We've all got a bit older but still have stories to tell! Photo taken by friend and old member of SMC, Ash Price and used here with his permission 

Saturday we were round at Alex and Rob’s, I was painting the front bedroom with Al while Brian was playing in the loft with Rob. We then went to the Coach and Horses and caught up with lots of old members of the mountaineering club, many from before my time, still a pleasant evening though.

Here's another photo from our SMC reunion. Lots more people we haven't seen for a few years but we have done many adventures with all of them (interesting and different funny stories with everyone in this photo). John and Pauline, talking to us in this photo, were reminding us of an adventure we all did years ago on the narrow ridge of the Ben Nevis horseshoe in poor conditions, strong winds and late at night. 'We got away with it' he said, mmm, probably right, but what a day! This photo was taken by Richard Lloyd, friend and old member of SMC and used here with his permission 

Great Malvern Priory that dates from 1085

Sunday we chilled with the papers and Soots, before Monday taking blood tests to send off to UK Biobank. Biobank is a study of 500,000 participants, recruited in 2010 to provide a large-scale biomedical database and research resource that is enabling new scientific discoveries to be made that improve public health. We don’t know what studies we have been involved in but we provided lots of information as well as being mentally and physically assessed initially. We have since, amongst other things, answered random questions about “what you ate yesterday “ and worn bracelets to monitor activity for a week. We recently carried out blood tests at home to see if we had Coving 19 antibodies, we both did, not surprisingly as we’d both had our first jab. Yesterday we provided blood samples to be sent off so they can ascertain whether these antibodies were due to the jab, or due to having had the virus.

We then had our first meal out this week with the Monday Club boys at Diwan’s for a fab curry. I may be the size of a house as that is the first of six meals out this week! Off to the gym now then!

So although we’ve felt busy there isn’t much to write, or probably many photos. That’ll make a change then!

Inside the Priory. It's a beautiful old building, built not long after the battle of Hastings  and originally much smaller and built for 30 monks, but extended in the years between 1400 and 1500. It managed to survive the dissolution of monasteries during the reign of King Henry VIII as the parishioners of Malvern petitioned the King and succeeded in buying it for £20

Priory Park, Malvern with the hills behind. Although the Malvern hills are not particularly high, highest point 425m (1394ft), they dominate the surrounding lower lying area. The range of hills are about 8 miles (13km) running roughly north-south and have remains of Bronze Age settlements and Romans, but they also offer excellent walking opportunities (we have walked the entire ridge end to end), some rock climbing (we have done some of that also), paragliding (we haven't done that - yet!) and we can also claim to have ski toured over them and skied down off the highest point (they are not well known for snow, but we picked a freak day of high snow fall and went for it!). They are also known for the excellent Malvern mineral water that flows here from deep underground. You can buy it already bottled, or collect it yourself for free by walking up to St Ann's Well

I was intrigued to learn how the Malvern Hills formed and why they dominate the landscape. A noticeboard in Rose Bank Gardens gave me the answer, here's what it said:

'The rocks found in the main ridge of the hills were formed when molten rock inside a volcano cooled and became solid about 680 million years ago. This was during the Precambrian Era, when there were only a few forms of life in the oceans. Later earth movements cracked these rocks, allowing fresh molten rock to penetrate and then solidify into coarse-grained rocks such as granite.

More earth movements squashed and sheared these rocks, changing some of them into rocks called schists and gneisses. After this the rocks were uplifted and eroded, forming sediments laid down in a tropical sea on the west of the hills. Later still, the Hills were in desert conditions which produced sandstone to the east.'