ON THE TAKE OFF STRIP WELL ALMOST 10 MILES TODAY

I went with Tom and Jane and Louise who knew where we needed to head and walked across country over numerous foot paths passing the old Drovers Arms and Whipping Stocks to Peover Hall and St Lawrence's next door where we paused for Jane to attend to some caretaking items and them set off on an equally interesting walk back , the last part of the walk saw us directed at diverging paths and I found myself emerge only a few yards from our road from a footpath I never knew existed. It was a hot day with clear blue skies and a heavy perfume of spring rushing to summer after it's late appearance. There were insects in proliferation and blue bells and wild garlic washed across the wooded sections of the route. It certainly can become slightly addictive and is a good way of appreciating the countryside but preferably at a slightly slower pace. I like to be able to stop and take in the atmosphere.

Mandy is now up to speed on the DVD orders and downloading. I'll try and blog from the lounge before take off tomorrow, Mandy will drop me at Manchester airport about 11am so I'll get a couple of hours to enjoy the freebies in the Servisair lounge. I've added the recent DVDs to EBay, they are already on this site's shop page and with Amazon well it's gone back to playing up albeit it shows as uploaded but i guess I won't be around to argue with them, they really are a crap outfit if anything goes wrong. I've had a session getting 5 hours of the digitised cine ready to upload on EBay but it will have to be early tomorrow as time has skipped by this evening. 

My knee is a bit 'tight' after the 10 mile walk but other than a little scuffing on my toes I seem to be ok, I'll get a lot of walking done in China so I won't be sitting idly by, the little minibuses they have for us can be killers on the spine and both John and I dread them. I think we are booked at a local restaurant for a bus club knees up on Guangzhou ( Canton). I've gone through the itinerary a couple of times to make sure I understand what I've written, I'm sure I'll be corrected when I've messed up. The case and camera bag are ready in the hall. We went down the tip and got shot of a lot of the kitchen clear out junk, we also called into Knutsford ( passing hundreds of trucks trying to cut through Northwich to avoid blocked north bound M6 - camera needless to say not with me) and called at Waterstones to stick up on reading material for the trip plus I purchased 2 giant cream cakes at Booths, very necessary after 10 miles of walking. I'll nip out and water the garden now, there is probably going to be some rain here tomorrow.