Christmas in the Mendips

I spent four nights over Christmas at a hotel in Loxton, December walks in wind that blows you over, dripping nose and despite good walking boots that I’ve worn before, I got a blister and couldn’t do the third day of walking. I spent it wandering around Wells, its cathedral and bishop's palace moat.

The hotel food was like school dinners - sloppy. No fruit, no cheese course. The last dinner offered pork casserole, but when it came it not only had little pork but looked like a gelatinous mess. Dee said she would write to the hotel to complain. Nevertheless, I’m grateful someone else planned, someone else cooked, and served, and someone else is washing up.

I’ve people to talk to, 24 ramblers, Justin was here last year and Sue. Not here not in Loxton but with RWW at Malvern in the Abbey hotel.  Deb from London though born in Blackpool has had BC and so has Gwen. Gwen has done the Zoe programme and we had a long discussion about its benefits and what we'd learned from it. Her partner / husband Ray, worked at the RAE in the seventies and eighties. He was a scientist who counts, a metrologist. Metrologist not a meteorologist. I thought that was combinatorics. It’s not statistics. Dee works in Scotland. Helen couldn't walk because she'd broken her foot. When one of the leaders, Jon, asked her about gluten-free bread she explained about good food and unprocessed food and timing of meals - all the things that Gwen had reported on from learning on her Zoe programme. In the morning, Jon said he'd looked it up and would follow up.