Taz & I both had the day off work today but it was far too warm & sunny to work in the shed, so we nipped over to see Dave & Janie in Aldershot, then round the corner to a rather splendid little cafe for a perfect English fry-up breakfast. The ideal way to start the day.
Feeling a little guilty, we decided to work all those excess calories off again with a quick jaunt around Virginia Water. V.W's about half an hour's drive from us, near Camberley in Surrey. It's an area of woodland & lakes owned by the Crown estate -sort of the Queen's back garden, backing onto Windsor Great Park, Savill Gardens & the Guards polo ground. I've been going there since I was a kid & it's always been free to park, so I was a little upset to find shiny new parking barriers & a pound an hour charge. Fortunately we managed to drive around the far side of the lake & find a layby to park in for free.
We spent a very pleasant couple of hours wandering around the lake -it's 4 1/2 miles all the way around. Being mid week, it was pretty deserted, but at weekends it gets very busy. We were passed by a few annoyingly fit looking types jogging around the waters. By the time we'd sauntered the whole way round, stopping off for a coffee & a slice of carrot cake at the tea stall on the way, some of them had lapped us 3 or 4 times.
There's a pretty little waterfall there, which you can normally paddle across, but when we got there we found it surrounded by lighting rigs & people with clipboards. A guy with a walkie talkie asked us to hang on for a few minutes while they shot some footage -a scene for a new Miss Marple story apparently. While we waited patiently a couple of overweight joggers barged past, straight through the middle of the shot, shouting "Public footpath". Idiots.
Taz doing her woodland nymph thing.