Back in the UK

There's a distinct lack of photos for this blog entry. The only one's taken are from Brian's long (17.2 mile) training walk for the West Highland Way. Starting and finishing in Alvechurch, it went over the Lickey Hills, Waseley Country Park, up to the Clent Hills and then back again. This is near the start on the canal bridge at Withybed Green in Alvechurch near The Crown pub, one of five pubs in our village  

A week has gone by, in the blink of an eye, we had a good Monday Club with Tim, Mark and Fiona at the Weighbridge, in Alvechurch, very convenient for us. Tonight will be a much more traditional meeting, Old Moseley Arms followed by Diwans for a curry. Looking forward to that.

The bluebells are coming into flower now, carpeting woodlands and fields in a sea of blue. Give it another few days and it will be a full blue carpet 

We’ve done lots of boring but necessary things, shopping, cleaning, pottering, as singles, couples, and threes. Medical for mum and Brian, my dentist for today was cancelled.

Saturday we went to see Jonathan, Lucy and Caroline which was lovely, haven’t seen them for ages. Caroline had cooked her signature chocolate brownies which are yummy, in fact I might just sneak off and have one. Brian is out walking, it’s not long now till the West Highland Way, and mum is at knit and natter.

Taken from the top of Beacon Hill, the highest point on the Lickey Hills. Right of centre are the high rise buildings in Birmingham City Centre 

Yesterday was the rehearsal for Fiona and James’s wedding, good to see Steph and Sam with Rory and Ivy, the pageboy and flower girl. Jenny was amazingly controlled as, somehow, a wasp got up her trousers and stung her four times! Poor thing. We then went to the pub and had a glass of wine or two, more wedding talk, obviously but with less than a week to go, only to be expected.

Our exciting news however, is that after our auditions at the beginning of March, we have both been invited to participate in both the opening and closing ceremonies of the Commonwealth Games. People keep saying they’ll be looking for us, I hope no one sees us as that will probably mean one of us has fallen over! We don’t know what is involved yet, and even if we did we have been sworn to secrecy! We are really looking forward to it!

This one's further on, on top of the Windmill Hill in Waseley Country Park. Left are the Clent Hills, Stourbridge and Halesowen stretch out to the right 

I wrote this on Monday, it’s now Wednesday, and with nothing to report, except seeing Alex and Rob before Monday Club Curry, and seeing Jo and Mike yesterday evening, we still seem to have been ridiculously busy

This was as far as I got. Walton Hill in the Clent Hills. From here I started back towards Alvechurch, completing a distance of 27.6km with 628m of ascent in just over 6 hours and with sore feet and aching legs. The good news for me is that this is longer and with more ascent than the longest day of the West Highland Way, the bad news is that I'll have 8 days of long days like this! I hope I can do it! Wednesday 4th May next week is when we start it

To see a Relive video of my walk click here