116 - Friday was a whirlwind, Rachel was back from holiday and I had a short period of time to quickly handover with her before another call at 9am to discuss additional Covid protocols in the office and then I had another interview with a candidate and then a very busy day prepping for not being around for 2 days next week. I had a catch up with Katie and Rachel for my handover and then I finally finished up around 9pm having had to upload all the CVs for my retainer and send all the links for the Hinterviews. I also had a dilemna about what to do with a particular role, but I came up with a workable solution in the end thankfully. We then had a late dinner of takeaway Chinese which did take ages to arrive and then I was very tired and went to bed after I think watching some more Dave on TV. I also eventually managed to finally order a present for him at last and ordered a personalised OS map (paper!) centred on where we got married at North Shire.
117 - Saturday - we woke up and Alan decided to tell me that we had to go and "collect" my anniversary present from somewhere in South Yorkshire, so we had some coffee and some quick cereal and set off and he drove down the A1 and eventually after a guessing game I managed to guess Worksop as where we were going. We got there after around an hour and he'd sponsored an area of woodland for me at Hannah Park via the Woodland Trust which was a lovely present. We wondered around and found the patch that was dedicated and it was a lovely place with lots of different types of trees and birds and lots of people walking their dogs. Amusingly as we walked towards the entrance there was a friendly little dog that kept saying hello and I was almost convinced that Alan had adopted it for me! We drove back home and then had a relax at home with an idea that I wanted us to head back to Eccup Resevoir where we ran our first "date" 5 years ago. We got there fairly late on in the afternoon, but had estimated we'd have enough time to be able to get around before sunset and we just about managed it with a jog walk around the 4 miles. We got home and then I made tea which was a Hello Fresh spicy veggie coconut curry soup and I also prepped some of the very many apples that our neighbour Anna had kindly given us for the Apple and Roasted Garlic chutney I then tidied as much as I could and organised things for travelling to North Shire tomorrow after making 5 litres of the chutney and putting it all in jars - it was past 1am by the time that I came to bed. I cleaned the fridge so that I could ask our neighbour who was feeding the cats to put the milk away for us.
118 - Sunday - I woke up at a reasonable time and spent a good chunk of time tidying and cleaning the house after packing and we set off to drive to Bempton Cliffs and I drove in Alan's car. It's not far, but lots of slow winding roads and took us over an hour and a half to get there. The weather was calm, but not too sunny or windy and we strolled along the edges of the cliffs and saw a fisherman who had scaled down the cliffs to fish, lots of gannets and a potential seal (fortuantely we'd brought the binoculours this time!) we stopped off and I had a sandwich and Alan some millionaires shortbread (he was disappointed that it was vegan) and a couple of teas and then Alan drove us to North Shire and we arrived just after 4.30pm. We walked straight to Hagrids and the key was in the lock for us and we settled in and ended up cooking some pizza for tea, drinking the champagne that my work colleagues all bought for us when we got engaged. We watched Dave and started a very hard 1000 piece jigsaw puzzle which was extremely tricky!
119 - Monday - the weather was lovely when we woke up and we made breakfast which took a while in the convection oven - we baked sausage and black pudding for about an hour and ate it with tiger bread and BBQ sauce outside and enjoyed the lovely sunny day that wasn't quite as warm as our actual wedding was exactly a year ago. I wanted to go for a run and suggested I could do that whilst Alan had a bath, but then I'd also suggested that we visited Runswick Bay as we'd never been in any of the times that we'd visited North Shire and so we drove out and it was only about 13 minutes drive. We found a car park that unfortunately had a broken card machine and so we put all the coins I had into the machine and got an hour, but we weren't sure if that would be enough, luckily I spotted that you could use the Ringo app to pay and we took a picture in case we needed more time. It's a really stunning beach although a good steep walk down, and quiet as no busy shops or food stalls and so we walked along paddling in the sea and looked at the rock pools and saw different seaweed, anemones, little fish, crabs and later on Oystercatchers. We then moved inland so that Alan could sit and sort out the parking and spotted a load of rocks that had fossils in them, we tapped away and found some great ammonites and also found some fools gold. We then started to head back up the beach and spotted a crack next to a water fountain and a chap told us that it was 300 steps up to the top, so we climbed up the cliff path and looked at the stunning view. We then had to top up the parking again and headed back up to the car. Once we got to the car I was craving fish and chips, but couldn't find any on the way although we did stop at a COOP and I grabbed salad leaves, lollies, drinks and raspberries and it was the first proper shop I'd been in ages and no one was doing the one way system right! We got to the fish and chips place I'd found on the map, but it was closed, but Alan spotted it on Just Eat and so we decided to try and order later. We got back and it was still lovely and warm and we bumped into the new manager and had a chat about how business had been for them in the past few months and the fact that they weren't doing a pick a pumpkin patch again this year as it was too stressful last year! I went for a run and explored a few of the little public footpaths and found that the road wasn't too good to run along, but managed to clear 4 miles in a decent time and then got in the lovely copper bath for a relax and Alan ordered us fish and chips for delivery. We did more work on the jigsaw and then ate fish and chips outside, the peacocks were after me and I managed to spill the gravy and peas on the floor and Alan had to keep chasing them away! We had some nice pink Moet with our dinner and watched the sunset and then went inside to watch a DVD - Bill & Ted's Bogus Journey and then move Dave and struggled with the light on the jigsaw puzzle before I rested on the sofa and started to fall asleep.
120 - Tuesday - we had planned to walk up Roseberry Topping today, but Alan woke up with ear ache and feeling rubbish so we relaxed at Hagrid and I tidied up, packed and had breakfast and then at 11am we checked out and I drove us home as Alan wasn't feeling good and didn't even eat breakfast. It took about an hour and 40 mins to get home and at one point an angry Network Rail van driver beeped and gestured at me as I stopped at a roundabout before driving on! When we got back we unpacked and Alan went almost straight away up to bed for the rest of the day. I tidied and unpacked and then dealt with a few work bits whilst watching The Social Dilemma which was really though provoking and made me turn off a lot of my notificatios. I then went for a run - I had time and daylight so I decided to do 10k which I managed in 53 mins and 9 seconds which is probably the fastest all year and I then decided to run for a full hour and managed nearly 7 miles. I managed to listen to a further 1 hour of the Wind Up Bird Chronicles and only have 2 hours to go! I'm behind by about 7 miles from my 1000 mile target so I'm hoping I can catch up over the next few days/weeks. I came back and had a bath and read some more of Fabulous and only have 1 story left to go. I bottled some more Kombucha and watched the 8pm speech from the Prime Minister which is a bit odd as now he's saying if you can work from home to work from home, so I'm not sure what the means for me, although our company line is that we work better in offices so to try and continue to be in the office, so I'm going in tomorrow, much to Alan's frustration. I made a jacket potato and salad for dinner and ate it watching Great British Bake Off and made some lunch for tomorrow and found bugs living in the tiger bread and so had to throw that out. I'd managed to get Alan to eat some strawberries, raspberries and cream, but he's still feeling poorly.
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