Do the walk of life

Thanks to the irritating rattle of the pedometer, I’ve discovered the reason why I feel blobby and earthbound. Disregarding the extra steppage of the weekend’s caching-fest (averaging about 13,500 steps a day, or 5 ¾ miles) my ‘normal’ day’s activity – when I’m at home, I mean – is about 10,400 steps, or 4 ¼ miles. So having gone back to work yesterday I was staggered to discover that a regular workday clocked up a mere 2152 steps, or 0.9 miles. With my family history of poor circulation and dropping dead at an early age (I’ve already outlived several recent ancestors) from strokes, this is simply not acceptable. Something must be done.

You remember I said we saw a lovely ruin when we were caching? Well, Google came to my aid, and I have identified it as ‘Abbey House, Ranton’. It now has no roof and is a mere shell – it must have been lovely in its heyday. I have also identified the funny little plant I noticed up on Cannock Chase. First I noticed one plant and got quite excited because it was a new plant to me, then further on there were a few more, and by the time we reached a particular cache we were knee-deep in them, and surrounded on all sides! I picked a small piece to take home and identify, and Ned photoed it too. The sample is still in the car somewhere, and the film is still in the camera, but my trusty Book of the British Countryside assures me it is a bilberry.