Perhaps Spring Is Coming?

I approached this walk with some trepidation, wondering whether my strained muscle from the previous week would stand up to it. Last Sunday, I looked up on the Internet how you aught to treat a strained muscle .... and apparently you use RICE: Rest, Ice, Compression, Elevation.

So ..... I think I failed on all counts. Rest .... don't think the 4.5 walk last Saturday counted, although I've taken it easy the rest of the week. Ice .... oh dear, after the walk I soaked in a hot bath. Compression ..... can't imagine bandaging up my thigh! Elevation ..... apparently the elevation needs to be above the level of your heart and just the thought of the position this would entail is enough to induce a serious fit of the giggles :)

Anyhow, on our walk we met this seriously elegant black swan on the Lea. I've only seen them as part of ornamental collections and he did seem a little out of place on his own. He was trying to accompany a pair of swans but the male swan wasn't impressed!

Still, I think Spring is in the air. We started our walk at 8.15am and all you could hear was the sound of birds singing. Lots of these were blue tits, great tits and robins ..... but many were LBJs ........ Little Brown Jobs! The many little birds that you only see as silhouettes that could be almost anything!! And all the trees and bushes seemed to have a green halo around them ..... the beginnings of buds. Not forgetting this lovely sight; snowdrops.

I deliberately started our walk relatively slowly so as to warm my muscles up slowly. By the end of our walk, my leg did ache a bit but not too badly. We were out for a total of 6hrs and 9minutes and moving for 5hrs and 36 minutes. Our average moving speed was 3.2mph and we covered a distance of 17.7 miles.