By some kind of Easter miracle, the weather this long weekend has been pretty fabulous. Usually Bank Holidays in the U.K. = rain, but not this time, in Hampshire/Surrey at least. So I’ve made the most of it by spending a fair bit of time outside. With my course now finished, culminating in the submission of a 3938 word essay at 2am on Thursday 13th (10 hours ahead of schedule, woo hoo!), I’m free to enjoy myself. Having also been sitting for pretty much the last two weeks, both at work and to finish the course, I knew I needed to get outside as my back was really starting to play up. I still plan to walk the South Downs way next Spring, so what better time to start getting out more and getting some walks in?

On Friday I decided to stay local and head to one of the nearby marinas for a coffee before doing a longer loop home. It was fairly quite for a Bank Holiday weekend which was nice, and after a wander down to the sea through a swathe of expensive houses, large plots of land with horses and expensive cars in the drive I reached the water.

It’s a route I often walk along, for good reason. My photos don’t do it justice but it’s a lovely river and there’s always plenty going on in the water to look at. I stopped for a quick chat with three women who were blowing up boards for a bit of stand-up paddle boarding. It looks like fun and something I’d love to try one day. I left them too it and headed home, walking five miles in total. So not loads but it felt good to get out.

Sunday was allotment day, and after 4 hours in the sun trying to remove as much bindwind as I could from my raspberry patch, a night of doing bugger all was called for.

I think 4 hours on the trot was a bit ambitious as my back was killing me on Saturday night. Bugger. I’d planned a walk with friends the next day, so knew that would more than likely help it. Thankfully I was correct.

So today I drove to Denbies vineyard in Surrey to meet my friends Nicky and Grant for a 10 mile walk through the Surrey Hills.  The route itself was that of the Denbies 10 race that Nicky used to run, and that I was supposed to do in January until I pulled my hamstring. So it was great to be able to walk the route and see what I’d missed. It was a bit of a chilly day, with a lot of low cloud cover, but we wrapped up, and about 2 mins in, walking up the first of many hills, it felt like it had warmed up!

When the sun came out from behind the clouds it was really warm, and overall the weather Gods were kind to us as it stayed dry throughout.  The route is so beautiful, we walked through woodland, fields and up and down the valley to see some amazing views. My phone camera isn’t great in low light so my pictures don’t do justice to the views.

All in all we walked just over 10 miles, and I can honestly say I loved every minute ☺️ Over the summer I want to try and walk a lot of the South Downs to get a feel for where I’ll be walking next year, but I’ll definitely make time to come back to Surrey and the North Downs.