Worcester Beacon

I went to Swansea for three days this week - felt quite shattered from long days in the office - but enjoyed meeting lots of people and sitting having dinner outside in the warm evenings. The office and hotel are quite close to the water front and during the lunch times I wandered down to the harbour and looked for seals while eating my lunch. Harry went to June's birthday party by himself as I was rather late back on Wednesday evening and then we had a dinner at the little Mediterranean cafe around the corner which had changed its menu and lowered its prices. After that we both welcomed a couple of nights at home before our next adventure - walking up the Worcester Beacon with Barbara and Mike. It rained on the way up the motorway but by the time we arrived it was warm, so we enjoyed sitting in the sun waiting for our friends to arrive. We had forgotten Harry's phone (it had Mike and Barbara's number on it) and I had mine (which didn't have Mike and Barbara's number on it) and Mike had his phone (but only our home phone number on it) so after sitting in another car park waiting for us for a while Mike decided to come looking for us - and eventually we found each other.
Great Malvern is a lovely little country town (if you call 35,000 little) and was developed mainly in Queen Victoria's time with the visitors and locals 'taking the waters' - yes it is another spa town. Both Charles Darwin and Charles Dickens 'took the waters' and we stopped at St Ann's Well to do the same. Apparently, there is a business in bottling Malvern Water - Schweppes have the monopoly (began the bottling business in 1851 but bottling did occur as early as the 17th century). You can get it for free from the various springs - the internet says to 'take note of any warning signs re quality' and when we stopped at St Ann's Well there was one such warning above the well, so we settled for tea.

And further up we climbed through the fox gloves, pink and brown grasses, past the Belted Galloways (Harry thought a belted galloway was a bird much to M and B's amusement but it is actually a cow with a white circle round its tum). I think Harry must have been thinking about the 'bird man' competition in London this weekend where two enthusiastic people tried 'to moo-ve into the sky on a flying cow ... but ended up making udder fools of themselves'. Needless to say they didn't take the £25,000 prize for flying 100 metres off Bognor Regis pier in West Sussex.

Anyway, you'll see from the photos that Harry enjoyed the 'dizzy heights' of the Worcester Beacon hills as we all did. From the top we could see seven counties, churches and large houses in Great Malvern, Little Malvern and Malvern Chase, a little bit of industry, Pierre parked in the car park, lots of large hotels, a wide range of trees, rolling hills and plains. We walked from the highest peak across to the north peak (slightly lower but steeper to get to) and then down another steep path back to our picnic in the 'Winter Gardens'. Great fun with friends.

On Sunday we had a slow start - not surprising really after our 5 hour hike the day before. (We discovered we aren't 'ramblers' - they go faster and usually with a map - but we fit into the 'ambler' category - slower, stop to look at the view, take photos etc). In the early afternoon we biked down to see the Banksy exhibition (left that for another day -queue was rather long and we didn't feel like standing in the sun for an hour) so rode to St Andrews park where the Dixie Hotspots were playing New Orleans Jazz. It was amusing to watch the band set up as the trombonist and trumpeteer were late in arriving (30 minutes and 60 minutes respectively), even though given maps according to the drummer they had set their satnav and ended up in lands far from Bristol!! The others weren't that impressed and I must admit the music did pick up a bit once the those two instruments arrived. The players arrived rather hot, sweaty and anxious and I think it took a few tunes for them to get over coming in late. So, for two hours we sat in deckchairs, eating our last packet of pineapple lumps, listening to the band, watching families enjoy themselves, and little children dancing. It started to rain at the end (no they didn't start playing "I'm Singing in the Rain") - I wondered why everyone was putting up umbrellas but Harry pointed out I (not him) was sitting under a tree.


News this week - the recession continues ...

• 60,000 students many of them with straight A 'A' levels can not get places in universities - there has been a huge increase in demand as young people are heading towards further education as they can't get jobs
  
• benefits bill this year is forecast to be £25 billion higher than the tax take this year, made worse by increasing immigration

But there is some good news - a couple celebrating their 60th wedding anniversary the other day - the husband said 'You go on a learning curve, you learn to appreciate and respect and that goes on with your love'.