Magnificent March

I turned my back for a second and all of a sudden it's skipped Spring and moved straight onto Summer.  Not that I'm complaining, I heart Summer completely...who cares if we have to get our water from a standpipe for the rest of the year because all reservoirs have dried up, as long as I can keep my Vitamin D at an excessively high level.

Apparently it's topping 21 degrees C over the next few days, go ahead and mock those who live in warmer climates, but here...in March....it should be dull, wet and barely breaking double figures.  Today I spent many hours in the garden putting a severe dent in my latest Clive Cussler adventure whilst eating a ham/egg salad in shorts and t-shirt and in danger of breaking an actual sweat.

Yesterday the weather was equally as lush and I took myself off to Arundel.  A stupendous place to waste several hours with its meandering river, lake and rustic village, all in the shadow of an 11th Century castle.  Blissfully peaceful and contented I was...until the army of grandmothers with screaming sprogs in tow arrived with several kilos of bread in an attempt to severely damage the health of the league of ducks who called Swanbourne lake home.

My view yesterday lunch time

 A slightly hazy affair by the lake (the ducks making a beeline for the grannies gluten filled products)

So I vacated to seek out ice cream and wandered a spell along the river.  I observed some kind of  macho ritual between a group of students which appeared to involved chucking pebbles into the river to scare of any wildlife which had the misfortune to be lurking.  They needn't have worried however, Freddie Flintoff none of them were, launching rocks less than 5 feet into the water, at a 90 degree angle into a tree and quite magnificently into a bush placed 10 metres to the rear.

Ahh, those row boats, many a happy day spent on the lake

Starting to turn a little Stephen King down by the lake...time for ice cream

 

The sun was beginning to lose its heat as the day wore on, reminding everyone that it is indeed but March, and so I retreated to the train station, homeward bound.  Imagine my delight when I discovered all trains had been cancelled due to an earlier breakdown on the tracks and the replacement bus service was caught in traffic indefinitely (this I would like to point out is not an irregular occurrence for Southern Trains who test the patience of travelers on a regular basis).  My normal reaction would be to call on the services of taxi dad, but for the fact that the area surrounding Arundel is experiencing serious roadworks causing traffic chaos, hence why I took to the train in the first place.  So plan B was actioned, with trusty map in hand I decided to walk to the nearest place I could cadge a lift from, the village of Ford...3 miles away.

I eventually made it home and it wasn't all bad since the view from the river as I walked to Ford was pretty impressive and I pretty much burnt off the earlier consumed ice cream...so win/win.