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Today’s post is brought to you by Pat Kane – a long-time friend of Sheila’s – and by the (sadly departed!) agony aunt, Marje Proops:

Thanks Pat (and Marje!) xxx

I plan to do a bit of cycling in preparation for going up Kili.  I used to jog, but doubt I could manage it now, so cycling might provide me with a bit of aerobic exercise during the next few months.

I have always wanted to have a bike, and can remember how jealous I was of my sister Leslie, when she was given a shiny new blue tricycle – not me!  I was probably about two years old at the time and Leslie seventeen months older.  The adults were concerned about Leslie’s physical co-ordination, and thought riding the trike would improve this.  So my aim in life became to get on her trike when no-one was looking.  I would jump on and ride off – or show off on it, whenever I got a chance. Although it was always referred to as Leslie’s bike, I think I probably got more use from it, until we both got too big for it and it was handed down to our little brother.

When I was four, I had a boyfriend who lived down the road called Peter.  Peter had a trike and he was willing to let me stand on the back of his trike with my hands on his shoulders, while he sat in the saddle madly pedalling.  He could get up quite a speed on the pavement and we had a whale of a time racing round like this together.  In these days there was very little traffic around and it was considered safe enough to let children play in the street without supervision.

All went well until he took a corner too fast and I went flying off, resulting in a broken left arm for me. His family emigrated to Australia shortly afterwards – I assume this was not connected to my accident!

For my seventh birthday, I finally got my own bike.  It was a small second hand one and I was thrilled. I remember learning to ride this two wheeler in the back garden, regularly tumbling over into the hedge of roses, which separated our garden from our neighbours.  Within a few months I was proficient and was allowed out to ride with my friends up the park and around country lanes.  So long as we turned up at mealtimes this was considered fine.

By the time I was ten, I had outgrown that bike, and I got my eye on a bike called a “Pink Witch” which was for sale for £23 in the window of the local bike shop.  I had saved up a few pounds: my grandparents used to give me a pound every Christmas and birthday and my great aunt would give me ten shillings. I wanted my parents to make up the difference as my eleventh birthday present.

Well I did get a new bike – but not the Pink Witch!  A pink bike was considered far too gaudy, so I got a tasteful dark blue one instead – I remember it cost £21.  I was happy – I had my freedom – I was off!

I have always had bikes since then. I have never been a spectacular cyclist, but I love the feeling of movement and of the wind whistling past.  I cycled to work most of my working life: what a joy.  I have always thought I was so lucky in this respect compared to people stuck in tube trains and buses

And now I have a lovely pale blue bike – not very tasteful, but who cares?  I was upset when my previous bike was nicked from outside a friend’s house in November, but am delighted to have a replacement now.  A bit of riding around might help in getting me as fit as I can get for the Kili Climb.

 

Some of you may already have seen a video of Sheila’s grandson Samson practicing for “news time” at school, but just in case you haven’t seen it yet, click here to watch it – we just had to share! And here’s a lovely close up of the picture he drew to go with it:

Apparently the real thing went very well – he even replaced the word “Dedda” with “Grandma” in order to sound more professional! (Oscar has called Sheila “Dedda” since he was tiny, and all the other grandchildren have followed suit).

Thanks for the fab post Samson! S, J & O xxx

And talking of news, we got a tweet back from CNN news anchor Brooke Baldwin this week. She wrote a lovely article about her recent Kili climb which you can read here.

The mountain sounds like a fairly filthy place, without much opportunity to get very clean.  I know we get provided with water – “washy, washy” twice a day, and there are bowls for hand washing when the camp is set up, but it seems despite this, sand and dirt gets everywhere.

Some people advise not to take contact lenses, as almost certainly, it will be impossible to put them in hygienically.

I saw a recommendation by a female mountaineer that women should varnish their finger nails with a dark colour before setting off.  The result of that is that when the filth gets under your fingernails on the climb, you won’t get upset by it, as you won’t be able to see it!

When we met with Apples from Exodus, he warned us of yet another nail issue.  He advised us to bring some foam rubber to put in the toes of our boots during the downhill climb.  We come down very quickly in just a day and a half, after having taken just over six days going up.  We will never before have walked continuously downhill from such a height so speedily.  The result of this, according to Apples, is that inevitably, your toes will press down in your boots.  It is common for people to end up with septic blisters on their toes, which are extremely painful.

Apples told us that at the bottom of the mountain, there are locals ready to deal with this.  They break a paperclip in two, and hold a lighter under the broken clip until it is red hot.  They then quickly plunge the clip into the nail of the infected toe, which makes a hole right through it, through which pus can escape!

I will be taking some bits of foam along, I can assure you.

Our recent week’s walking has made me realise I really need to start a proper training regime, if I am going to make it up Kili.  I did manage to keep up with the rest of the group – some of whom are probably half my age – but only just!  It was lovely that everyone managed to do all of the walks, but I did realise that those of us who are not as lean as we might be, found it harder than the others.  I have already lost over half a stone, but have to keep going to build up muscle and lose more fat.  I managed to resist the attractions of some fabulous Italian ice cream: it looked really yummy.  I felt quite virtuous!

I am not good at doing indoor exercise: the gym does not attract me.  I am an outdoor person – I love being in the fresh air with a blue sky above, birds in the sky, and trees and plants around me.  I can cope with a Pilates class once or twice a week, but other than that, it has to be walking, cycling or sea swimming.  I will have to make a point of doing one of these every day now, to keep up the level of fitness I reached after what was, for me, a strenuous week of walking.

In addition, I have another couple of weeks of walking lined up during the next few months.  In May I will be going to Charmouth in a group of twenty friends for a one week walking holiday.  We have rented various houses – mostly in the West Country – for a week every year for about twenty years now.  It is amazing what wonderful houses can be rented if there are enough of you to share the cost: we normally self-cater and have a whale of a time and walk every day.

And in June there is the prospect of participating in a replay of the Canterbury Tales!  I am really looking forward to that. There is going to be a nine day walk from Dover to Crawley along the Pilgrims’ Way.  Every evening after that day’s walk, a tale will be told by a famous poet or author in a nearby village hall.  The theme of the walks will be refugees and detainees, so there will be a lorry driver’s tale, a detainee’s tale, an interpreter’s tale, a solicitor’s tale etc.  I should be able to do the first four or five days of the walk and get to and from home by public transport every day.  You can read about it here. Come and join in, if you can – it might be fun!

I have a U3A walk from Seasalter to Faversham lined up for this week, as well as a three hour walk with Nordic Walking East Kent.  On Wednesday, as usual, I will be cooking at Catching Lives, which involves five hours on my feet – much of it walking, although a fair bit of chopping and dish washing too.  We work hard, and make some fab food – I’m sure that counts as exercise!

Add in a couple of Pilates classes: if I cycle there and back, I might be doing just about enough.  Fingers crossed!  But can I keep it up for another five months?  Who knows?

We had an absolutely gorgeous day this week, with blue sky and sun shine and the temperature just about made it into double figures: not bad for March.  I decided spring had sprung and that I was going to open up our caravan again, after the winter.

It is a static caravan in Seasalter, near Whitstable in Kent.  We first went to the site about nine years ago, when my dear friend Caroline told me that she had bought a caravan and invited us to see it.  As soon as I saw hers I fell in love with the idea of having one there too.  The site is a thin strip with the sea on one side and open countryside on the other.  It is only about seven miles away from home, and it is possible to get there by walking, cycling, bussing or driving, or a combination of these.  We were very lucky that a few months later, one came up for sale which was only a year old.  Statics are like cars: they lose value very quickly, so we got it for about two thirds of the price of a new one.  It has a living room/kitchen, two bedrooms and a bathroom with the smallest imaginable bath under the shower: great for children’s sandy bottoms!

This summer will be the our ninth caravan summer and in that time I estimate that well over a hundred different people have slept there – I wish I had kept a list.  Some of these people would not have had a holiday at all, had we not had the caravan.  I have spent loads of time there: I love being outside and being aware of the changes in the sea, the sky and the weather.  I potter about walking along the coast and spend lots of time sewing: the light is perfect for that.  The site and the caravan are not scenic – but everything around is.  Beach huts are much more beautiful and are in much greater demand. People pay sky high prices for them – but you can’t sleep in them and, more importantly, they don’t have bathroom facilities.

I love the fact that the site is in a fairly isolated area and there is not much to do.  There is another site half a mile down the road, which has a swimming pool, indoor and outdoor play areas and a club house.  Our site has none of that – just a field and a couple of swings.  Most of the caravans are owned by old people with dogs – but children love coming to visit.  They need to use their imagination to entertain themselves, whether on the beach or in the field and they can have more freedom there, than many of them normally have when at home.

The site closes up for the winter at the beginning of November and reopens in March.  I spent the day this week scrubbing every surface – it gets damp and mouldy in the winter – and putting the curtains back up and furniture to rights.  I had the door wide open with the sun streaming in and felt truly happy.  I look forward to some great days again there this summer. I had a lovely summer last year with lots of visiting family and friends: I hope they all come again and more.

However, there will have to be less of the sewing this year and a bit more strenuous exercise, if I am to be fit for Kili.  I have already agreed to co-ordinate sea swimming for Canterbury U3A, so hopefully I will have a few other oldies with me to brave the waters. I am not great at going in by myself, but I will have to push myself to do so.  A friend gave me her old bike and I keep it there, so I will take myself off along the country lanes on that.  The bike is great in the autumn, as I can use it for scrumping.  Last year, as well as the usual wild plums, apples, sloes and pears, I found a walnut tree by the side of the road and helped myself to a lovely crop of nuts.  I will certainly be visiting that tree again this year – if I have survived the Kili climb!

I woke up in the night recently wondering whether I was being a total prat by thinking I can walk up a mountain for seven days!  It is so easy to get things totally wrong it seems these days – or do I just feel that as I am getting older?  It seems no effort at all to innocently do things that are open to misinterpretation, or perhaps in the case of me thinking I can get up Kili, just plain daft!

At Catching Lives, the charity for Canterbury homeless people, where I cook with three other lovely people every Wednesday, it seems easy for us to do things in innocence, which are open to misinterpretation.  For example recently, Paula made some really delicious home made fish cakes.  She decided once she had fashioned them and put them out in trays that they looked a bit dull, so brightened each of them up with a blob of tinned tomato in the centre.  When the rest of us stopped what we were doing and turned to look at the fish cakes, we all had a good chuckle together!  They reminded me of the iced buns, which Celia Imrie held aloft in Calendar Girls.

There are other things that can go wrong as we get older, with more potential for disaster.  Stew and I were out for a meal with my friend Susie and some others recently.  There were a total of seven of us round the table, all into our seventh decade at least. Susie told us about the new car that she had ordered.  She was really looking forward to picking it up soon.  She told her son exactly what she had ordered – a lovely new silvery Honda Jazz from a garage in Peebles, which had been super helpful to her. It was when she told her son that the registration number was to be SK15 VJJ that she started to realise she might have got something wrong.  He gently suggested to her that she might ask for a different registration number.  None of us round the table could see anything untoward with the number, but I put VJJ into Google on my phone, and immediately saw what her son meant!  We clearly have not been keeping up with our reading – though I don’t know whether “Fifty Shades of Grey” is exactly my thing.  Happily Susie has managed to arrange for a different number for her car: when she approached the garage to indicate why she wanted a change, they were very quick to withdraw that number.

So I am depending on those younger than me to keep me on the straight and narrow in respect of the trip up Kili.  If the time comes when I appear to have lost the plot entirely PLEASE TELL ME!

I had the most expensive morning I have had in a long time, on the Monday morning after our return from Walking on the Amalfi Coast.  I spent £278 at the dentist before 10am!  I was vaguely aware when I was at the airport about to get on the plane at the beginning of the week, that something was not quite right in my mouth: the feeling did not go away.  However, I was taking strong painkillers all week for my arthritic toe, so the drugs seem to have done a doubling up job on my teeth too – the pain was never terrible.  I suspected I might have an abscess, but have never had one before, so didn’t know what one feels like.  I was very comforted by the knowledge that two of the group of sixteen were young women GPs, who I am sure would have sorted me out with some antibiotics, if push had come to shove.  Half way through the week I emailed my dentist, who very obligingly emailed me back saying he had fitted me in for first thing in the morning on the Monday after my return: that’s what I call a result!  Of course, I felt hardly felt anything after that – Sod’s Law – but thought I had better keep the appointment in any event.  After the first Xray – two more followed – the abscess was diagnosed and the drilling commenced!  He said he had to follow the root for an inch to get to the end of it!!  So now I know I have exceptionally long roots in my teeth – not the most useful information – and have also discovered what root canal treatment is.

It got me thinking about dental treatment for generations before and after mine.  It seems that the generations after mostly have wonderful teeth – perhaps due to the presence of fluoride.  However, previous generations had nightmare times with teeth.  We visited Beamish Museum in the North East of England with the children when they were small, where there is a dental surgery with some pretty scary looking implements.  We were told there that it was common practice for young women to have all their teeth removed before their marriage, as a sort of dowry from the woman’s family to the new husband.  It meant that he would never have to shell out any money for any dentistry for her!

Scots have historically always had bad teeth – perhaps due to their liking for sweeties and particularly tablet, which is a Scottish delicacy which guarantees instant tooth rot!  My parents in law didn’t have a tooth between them, when I first met them, and they were only in their fifties then.  That was not considered very unusual then, particularly among the less well off.

I am very pleased my abscess has occurred now, and not when I am doing the real thing up Kili!  Maybe I will pop into the dentist for an X-ray however, just before the trip, just to make sure there is no repetition!

Twenty years ago, or so, a group of female friends and relations would take ourselves off for a warm week in the early part of the year.  We called them “Girls’ Holidays” – although the ages of the “girls” varied between about 20 and 80!  I often had at least one daughter along, and also my Auntie Elsie came a few times.  Other friends brought family members too.  I think on one occasion, there were as many as twelve of us, all staying in a cheap hotel on an all inclusive basis.

One of the first of these holiday was to Eilat on the Red Sea.  Eilat is in Israel and is tightly sandwiched between Egypt and Jordan: both countries are almost within walking distance.  The sea was warm and the weather was beautiful.  We spent quite a lot of time swimming.  Jae was with us and also her cousin Louise and they decided to acquire a couple of masks and snorkels – or maybe they brought them with them.  They were very excited to be able to see coral and told us that it was teaming with fish of all sorts of exotic colours and patterns.  One day, they decided that some of us oldies should go snorkeling too.  They put their gear on to us and pushed us into the sea.  It was one of the most amazing experiences of my life!  The coral was amazing, the fish and other sea life were like nothing I had seen before – and I loved the absolute silence and stillness under the waves.  We were so pleased that we had a younger generation along: we would never have discovered the other world under the sea without them.

When we got back home, we discovered that there was a Scuba diving course available, which was actually government sponsored!  It seems very strange to think now, with education like all public services being pared to the bone, that there was a government initiative to offer NVQ courses to adults at very reduced prices – and that Scuba diving came under this umbrella!  Having loved the snorkeling, we thought Scuba diving was a natural progression.  I signed up, as did Jae, her sister Gwen and my friend Mary.  We had five full days training over several weekends, which included both classroom study and practical diving in various bodies of water.

I recently dug out the paperwork from the course, which I have to admit has stayed in a cupboard untouched for nearly twenty years.  I did this because I have this memory of being taught by two young boys – well, I suppose they might have been about 20 – and that we students behaved like children, falling about laughing by some of the terms used.  The one thing I remember we laughed about was the continual reference to “sandy bottoms”, but couldn’t remember what else we had found so funny.  Well I now see that there were frequent mentions of backrushes, trapped air, reverse blocks, bottom compositions and water movement, which I dare say provided fodder for a few jokes.

The practical diving took place in three locations, that I can remember.  One was a local public pool, where I was horrified to see the amount of debris lying on the bottom.  When you are above the water in a pool, it looks so lovely and clear: not so below, I can assure you.  One dive took place in a pool in the back garden of one of the instructors.  The pool clearly had a bit of a problem: it was like swimming in semolina.  Well actually, that wasn’t actually the word we used to describe the consistency of the water, but the word starts off much the same.  This blog is intended for family reading!   The third location was a gravel pit near Maidstone.  It was cold, forbidding and dark – a far cry from the wonderful blue sea or rather Red Sea, which had initially inspired this venture.  The only wrecks we were able to see there were old cars, which had been dumped in the water – no romantic ship wrecks for us.  One of the most important things we were required to do was read the dials on the SPG – the submersible pressure gauge. (No – I didn’t really remember the name of it – I looked it up in the handbook!)  Mary was starting to get long sighted then, and needed to hold the gauge at arms length to be able to read the dials.  However, the water was so muddy that when she held the SPG away from her, it disappeared into the filth! The young lads teaching us just couldn’t understand this problem, nor did  they realise how horrified we were at having to swim in this cold dark dirty water.

Neither Mary nor I have been Scuba diving since that day in the gravel pits, but I have been snorkeling and loved it.  I also have jumped off the deck of quite a big boat into the sea and generally felt more confident in water, since completing the course.

How lucky am I to have had the opportunity to share such experiences with my family?  In August, I am going to go off again with two generations – I am the old generation this time, not the middle one, as I was on the “Girls’ holidays”. I consider myself privileged to have this chance to do something so exciting with my daughter and grandson.  You could say I have been to the depths of the ocean with my family – well the gravel pits at least – and now I am to attempt to scale the highest freestanding mountain in the world again with my family to hand.  I would and will go to the ends of the earth for them if that was what they wanted.

 

I have been offered lots of advice from all sorts of people when I have told them about the plan to climb Kili. Everyone seems to want to put in their tuppence worth – even the taxi driver on the way home from the airport after the recent trip to the Amalfi coast had advice to give me. He admitted that he had been sitting behind the wheel of a car for the last ten years and had rarely even walked a few yards. However, his doctor has told him to lose weight and he now runs up and down the stairs in the airport car park, while waiting for people to arrive from their planes. I hope that doesn’t result in a heart attack: his pot belly is monumental! He recommended stairs to me, as did my friend Maureen at Catching Lives: she has offered to let me into the very tall block of flats where she lives, so I can run up and down her stairs – but after Amalfi, I feel I have seen enough steps to last me quite a while. One of the other people on the holiday said their next trip would be to the Netherlands: it is all pretty much level there!

Maureen’s other suggestion was that I should always stand during adverts, titles and credits, while watching TV. Standing seems to be a highly recommended activity at present, with people ordering standing desks for their offices and studies. However, I am usually on my laptop and/or iPhone or knitting, sewing or crocheting while watching TV – sometimes two or three of these together, so the resulting tangle of cables and yarn might be fatal, if I keep getting up and down. Actually Stew and I did try it one evening, and ended up bopping about and giggling at the same time, which can’t be at all bad.

I have been told that standing on one leg is good for me: it is supposed to strengthen bones and improve balance. I usually try to practice that at bus stops, if I have a while to wait – along with a few pelvic floor exercises, which yoga and Pilates teachers always seem to recommend for bus stop waits. I try to keep my facial contortions within normal bounds on such occasions!

One of the staff at Catching Lives has actually been up Kili, and his recommendation was to try to put your foot down flat when climbing up, rather than heel first and rolling the foot. His philosophy is that this technique lulls the mind and body into thinking you are in fact walking on the flat – not up a mountain. Hmm – the jury is out on that one, but I will try anything!

I developed blisters during the recent training exercise (aka holiday) on the underside of both my big toes. One of the best moments of the week was having Paul, our leader, tenderly apply patches and bandages to my toes to enable me to keep going. I have been offered lots of advice from others as to how to stop this happening again, including having Footbalance insoles made – a very clever machine views your feet and how you walk from every angle and purpose builds them for you – to encasing each toe in a tube to protect it. I feel a need for a lot of shopping coming on!

So thanks, everyone, for all your advice. I am thoroughly enjoying every bit of it and I know some of it will be useful: keep it coming, please.

On our last day of our Walking on the Amalfi Coast holiday, which was a bit of a practice run for walking up Kili, I made the stupid mistake of putting on my long Johns underneath my walking trousers. I had needed them on some of the previous days – it had been very cold when we were up high – but I certainly did not need them on that last day, when sweat was soon pouring off me. I ended up stripping off my trousers and continuing in my undies. Some others in the group were very gallant, saying that they looked quite snazzy – as if!

It reminded me of another long John moment some years ago. Stew and I were in Glasgow one frosty December, walking through the centre of town. For a few years, he had been thinking about getting a kilt – mainly to wear to Burns Night and other such functions, which we regularly attend at Canterbury Scottish Society – but also for wearing to weddings and other celebrations. Normally men get measured for a kilt and get it made to those measurements in their family tartan. However on this chilly day, we spotted a sale of ex-hire ready-made kilts and thought we would have a look.

There were two or three kilts which looked like distinct possibilities and were very reasonably priced, so Stew decided to try a couple of them on. He came out of the changing room wearing a pale blue mix kilt. He looked quite dashing in it: he has always had lovely looking slim legs! We agreed that the kilt was definitely a keeper, but he would need the rest of the outfit to go with it. The shop assistant said it would be best to start from the feet up, so Stew was sat down, so she could help him with socks and shoes.

It was at this point that I realised that he was looking distinctly uncomfortable. The very young girl assistant insisted in helping him into a pair of long socks, while Stew wriggled to try to keep the kilt covering his knees. I then caught a glimpse of something white peeping out under the kilt and realised what was causing his embarrassment. Instead of taking off his long Johns in the changing room, as a true Scot should have done, he had pulled them up and they were all bumfled (look it up in the urban dictionary – it really is a word) up above his knees!! I was struggling to keep a straight face as the young girl kept yanking his legs about, first to get him into socks and then to try the special kilt shoes on to his feet. He wanted out of there as fast as possible, but she was determined to get everything just right, and was down on her knees at his feet, sorting him out.

I just about held it together until we got out of the shop, when I couldn’t stop laughing. Stew has never quite understood what I thought was so funny about it. In fact when I reminded him of that occasion today and he realised I was likely to blog about it, he said he would not be talking to me again until after August, when I come back from having climbed – or perhaps not having climbed – Kilimanjaro and the blogging has ceased! I hope he relents: it is all in a good cause.

Ma lost her mum when she was only twelve. I can’t imagine how awful it must have been. Some of my very best friends are also without their mums, and feel it particularly hard on Mothering Sunday each year. So, whether you’re as lucky as me, and have both a mother to say Happy Mother’s Day to, and children to say it to you; or you just have to find a way to remember the good times at this time of year, I hope you have a lovely day today.

This year I’ve been extra lucky as I’ve had Ma to myself for the last week on our wonderful holiday walking on the Amalfi Coast. In a change from our usual blog posts, I’ve written a Mother’s Day post about it on the Exodus blog. Please click here and have a look.

Happy Mother’s Day Ma. I love you. Jx

The rest of the Exodus group on the “Walking the Amalfi Coast” holiday decided to visit Herculaneum on the one free day in the week and hired a bus with the wonderful motto “Pleasure on Wheels” to take them there. Jae and I had decided we wanted to visit Sorrento, where Stew and I had come in 1972, when I had won a weekend for two in the Mediterranean as part of the Guardian’s “Date with the Past” competition. We were very happy to hitch a lift down to the coast with Pleasure on Wheels, and then to get the train along to Sorrento.

At the station, Jae showed the girl in the information kiosk the photo of me taken on the balcony of our hotel in 1972 and amazingly the girl was able to point us in roughly the right direction. We walked through the town and were pleased to see it seemed to be a real town with proper shops – not just places full of tourist tat, as we have seen elsewhere in the area.

We got to the far end of the town. I have a clear memory of walking into the hotel from the road, and finding that we were on the highest floor, with the rest of the hotel spread over about six floors, clinging to the cliffs below the level of the road. Eventually we came to a row of hotels, which seemed to be in the right place. As soon as I saw the name Hotel Belair, I knew that was where we had stayed forty three years ago. The hotels all seemed to be closed up for the winter, some of them having renovations done. It is strange that they were open at the same time of year in 1972. However, I suppose then, holiday weekend flights were in their infancy, and Italy was fairly exotic. Nowadays in March, if you want a few warm days, you are more likely to go to the Canaries, Morocco or Egypt, where it is properly warm.

We wanted to try to locate the exact balcony where Stew had taken a photo of Jae (in utero) and me. We found a gate on the closed hotel which slid open and were able to make our way down a few floors on the outside of the hotel, using the balconies. It was blowing a bit of a gale – our chilliest day yet, with snow on the top of Vesuvius – but we managed a bit of a photo shoot.

When we got up again to the road, we were pretty cold, so Jae suggested that we cross the road to the very splendid, if deserted, upmarket Hotel Bristol for a cuppa to warm us up. At least it was open. We went in and were escorted up to a truly splendid dining room, with wonderful painted tiles on the floor and floral murals on the walls. It had the same fantastic view across the Bay of Naples, that I remember from my first visit. There is the bay in front, Vesuvius centre stage, hills all around and the fishing village of Sorrento almost at our feet.

We showed the very friendly waiter and the manager, who was maybe his father, the photo of me on the balcony in 1972. They were immediately convinced that it had been taken on a balcony of their hotel and delighted that Jae and I had returned! They talked about exactly where it must have been taken, explaining that more floors had been added to the hotel, which accounted for the slightly different aspect.

Jae and I spent an hour or so looking out over the amazing view, which had seemed to me to be something out of this world, on my first visit. We had warm drinks, which they brought with petits fours, then we moved on to limoncello, for old times’ sake.

Having thoroughly enjoyed our visit to this gorgeous hotel, which I had quite definitely never visited before, we asked the waiter for the bill. He said we should pay downstairs at reception, and walked us to the lift: the geography of hotels in this area is complicated, because of being up the side of a cliff.

At reception, we asked for our bill, and were told there would be no charge! They were delighted we had come and hoped we would return in the future. So we both came out feeling very well treated, slightly embarrassed, and with big grins on our faces. We have got into blogging of late – but now seem to be getting into blagging too! The Kili 3G plan has a lot to answer for!

We have walked on paths along the side of many citrus groves during our perambulations on the Amalfi coast. Some of the fruit is absolutely enormous and grows very densely. I was very surprised to hear that they can get up to four crops of lemons in one year! Why do we only get one crop of apples off our apple trees in Kent? I have found it very hard not to stop and pick up the oranges and lemons that have fallen on to the paths, but it doesn’t make sense to have the weight of them in my back pack all day – a missed scrumping opportunity!

When Stew and I were in this area on a walking holiday twenty odd years ago, we did one walk which ended on a citrus fruit farm. They showed is some of the most bizarre trees growing several varieties of fruit on each tree. I particularly remember the big grapefruits which were like oranges inside.

They made limoncello on the farm and they pressed the group to sample it. Stew decided to buy a bottle of it, and it was sold to him in a lemonade bottle with a crown cap on. However, when we got home, we couldn’t find the bottle. We couldn’t understand how we could have lost it.

It was about two months later that we found it. Stew had put the bottle into his back pack in a very little-used pocket. When he got home, he didn’t check the pocket and used the bag to carry his books up to the university every day. That bottle must have been carried up and down to the university a few dozen times before Stew found it! Sad to say, it didn’t taste anything like as good back home as it had in that sunny orchard with the trees heaving with fruit around us.

Jae and I have been getting lots of good hill walking practice in in Italy. Every bit of leg muscle aches. It must be good preparation for Kili.

Ma and I have attempted Vesuvius. If you haven’t read the post for the 10th of February on this blog, I’d recommend reading it now – it’ll make a little more sense of what’s to come in this one. You can find it on the calendar (on the left side bar on a laptop or desktop, or scroll down when you’ve clicked for the menu on a phone).

After the 2000+ steps walking down to Amalfi, every member of the group was “oof”ing as they sat down and stood up at breakfast. There was plenty of discussion about whether bums, knees or calves ached most. I was definitely in the calves camp – i tried to stand with my heels off a little step to stretch them out and my calves just said “no”! I’m somewhere in the middle of the group age-wise and I could only imagine it was feeling even achier for the older members of the group, but everyone seemed ready for whatever the day threw at us.

We left on the bus at 8.30am as Paul, our guide for the week, said it would be a long day. We drove to Pompeii and met up with a tour guide called Detori who showed us around. It’s a huge place – far larger than I’d ever imagined, and at the front gate there would have been public baths, with complicated heating and steaming systems, that all entrants to the city had to purify themselves in before they were allowed into the city walls. All of Detori’s talk of sitting, chatting in the warm pools, made me wish they were restored, and I could plunge my body – aching calves and all – into the steaming water. No such luck though, and on we all went, completely unpurified!

Pompeii was fascinating and, right at the end of the tour we were shown into a villa which Ma recognised from her visit when she was pregnant with me. We ate lunch and then jumped back in the bus to head up towards Vesuvius.

We changed into our walking boots and all piled out of the bus to start the climb. As the bus pulled away I said to Ma, “Have you got Grandma?”, at which point she hollered, “Stop that bus, we’ve left Grandma on it!” (which rather answered my question). The lovely Paul looked a bit quizzical, but jumped in front of the bus while Ma went on and retrieved Grandma (or, more accurately, a fifth of Grandma’s ashes). They were in a small, pretty cotton bag, and had been sitting on our headboard, adorned by Mimosa, under a picture of a view Grandma would have loved, for the previous few days.

We walked up the volcano to the edge of the crater, and then started to work our way around the crater. At one point, before the highest peak, our guide – Stefano – said, “This is probably the spot with the best view” and he went on to explain something about the crater. But I wasn’t listening. Our drive for bringing Grandma to Italy was to find her a brilliant view, and here was one looking out at the Bay of Naples, and across to Capri – she’d have loved it. So, while Stefano chatted on, I checked the wind direction (I’ve heard some bad ash-scattering stories!) and threw the ashes to the side of the volcano. Vesuvius is covered in ash, so it made not a jot of difference to anyone. Except us. A few of the men in the group doffed their caps to my gorgeous Grandma, and we all walked on. And we made it to the top!

So that’s another mountain Ma has under her belt. And Grandma can forever look at Capri and the beautiful, glittering sea around it, and imagine herself passing the time of day with Gracie Fields. A good day!