Monday Blues? More like soul friction!

OK, I spelled soul the wrong way for poetic effect, so shoot me.. and please put the soles of my feet out of their misery!

It was the usual routine this morning - I didn't dare go cycling with another day of strimming ahead of me, I might do tomorrow though, as even though I've got another day of strimming lined up, it's at home where there are some flat bits. This job in Lanciole (where I've been strimming on a slope all day long, hence the sole friction) is flipping hard work, but on the plus side, I'm starting to see our place as a much easier prospect!

I let the cats out this morning to watch Helen spinning on the turbo trainer. I thought it would be good for them to have some time outside while it was still cool, and there was the added benefit that Lucca wasn't indoors to beg for my bowl of cereal (or the milk at least).

I set off at 8:25am, to avoid the 9am road closure being an issue. The shortest route up to Lanciole is along the road at the valley bottom, where most of the paper mills are located. There are currently road works that close the road entirely between 9am and 6pm (they are running a methane pipe in the road and should have been finished well over a month ago, but are running over a touch - road works are the same everywhere!).

Despite having done the same trip at the same time twice last week without any trouble, while I was en route today, I found myself face to face with an articulated lorry that had obviously visited a mill early in the morning and was escaping the valley before the road closures caused him problems. Unfortunately, I met him at a narrow point in the road, which meant reversing quite some way, and the car behind me having to do the same! After watching through one eye as the lorry squeezed past, I breathed a sigh of relief and charged off again, only to be met by another just around the next corner! There was more reversing and more breath holding before I could get on my way - I've no idea why it was so much busier this morning.

I made it to work just before 9am, and after a brief hello to Gary, I unloaded my strimmer and set to it. The only area of the whole property I hadn't yet strimmed was directly in front of it - the most overgrown and the steepest. I got my strategy all wrong on this job - I should have started with the worst bits and worked towards the easier stuff, although in my defence, Gary had intended to join in with the strimming every day so I had imagined we'd share the load, but as yet he's not yet managed to do any as he's been crawling around painting metres and metres of dwarf wall while wrestling with lavender plants.

So my whole day today was spent standing on 45° slopes while strimming and trying my best not to end up in a heap with the strimmer at the bottom of the hill. It didn't matter how tightly I laced my shoes, my feet still slid around inside as I fought for grip on the banks, causing a fair bit of friction and discomfort on the soles of my feet.

Despite all of this, I had better stamina today, and it was only at about half past four that I felt ready to call it day - which is at a least a three-and-a-half-hour improvement on last week, but still left me with an hour and a half of hard slog before they reopened the road and I could go home.

At 6pm prompt I plodded up the hill to the car, threw a pile more wood into the boot and drove home - although not before negotiating another four trucks coming the other way!

Helen heard me arrive and came to help unload the car, then we sat on the patio with the cats for an hour in the last of the day's sun until a double rainbow made an appearance. And then the rain came of course, which sent all four of us running indoors. 

I then had a much needed shower, and started writing this post while Helen cooked a Ligurian potato salad (with green beans, olives and pesto). Dinner will be followed by catching up with yesterday's stage of the Tour de France (remember we are a day behind everyone else!). I'm looking forward to seeing if they climb the same big hill out of Hebden Bridge that I crawled up two years ago on the bike ride I did with my brother.

There are some rumours of very bad weather in the Lucca/Pisa area over the next 24 hours, with strong winds, heavy rain and storms, although it's hard to know whether it will affect us in our little valley where we seem to have our own weather system much of the time. For now it seems calm, if grey. We'll soon find out anyway!

Joining us on the patio - but at their own set of table and chairs.

Rainbow (it was a double, but the camera didn't pick up the second arch).