It’s Sunday now, another hot and sunny day in London, though it is only 7.30am. Forecast is for 24 degrees. We plan on catching the tube in to the Museum of London, with Yvonne, and then having a stroll along the Thames, we will see what happens.
I can’t remember when I last posted a blog, I think I need to start with Thursday when we ventured north along some busy motorways and some very narrow country roads in search of the Ada Cole Horse (and donkey) Sanctuary. It took some finding, the map on the pamphlet wasn’t too detailed and the address, being a country road narrowed it down to about a 10 mile stretch on a B road. We did find it though after an hour and a bit, many wrong turnings, and a few terse words.
I can’t remember if I’ve already explained about this establishment? It is a sanctuary which originally was set up by Ada Cole in the late 19th century. She was an animal rights activist mainly around their care and transport and she did a lot of animal rescues. She was a woman of “moderate means” but set up a sanctuary for animals. This particular property was taken on by Redwings which is a huge outfit that has properties all over the UK, when it became harder for the Ada Cole rescue centre to support itself.
Yvonne has adopted a pony called Katy who is a bay mare (who will be having her 21st birthday on July 27th- and to whose party Yvonne has been invited). Katy has been at the sanctuary since 1996, she was removed from her owners at that time because she was not being appropriately cared for, she had a big cut on the top of her tail which wasn’t being treated, and was being fed amongst other things, onions and yoghurt (I don’t know if together, a bit like white sauce and onions I guess). Anyway Yvonne when we asked what she would like to do for a day out, asked if we would like to go to the sanctuary to meet Katy, which sounded like a nice trip to us. Unfortunately Katy is quite shy and wouldn’t come over to where we were, neither would any of her paddock-mates, they stayed munching grass away in the distance, to the point we couldn’t be sure which bay horse was Katy. However there were plenty of other more keen characters who were very happy to have nose scratched and necks rubbed with which we obliged. We spent a couple of hours wandering around, reading the stories of where the horses/ponies/donkeys had come from and why, many awful stories of neglect and improper care. I don’t think any of the animals could complain about their life now, they have beautiful paddocks, friends, lots of love and attention, good food and all look, to my untrained eye, in wonderful condition.
From here we took some more narrow and winding roads south to inside the M25 where we went and visited some garden nurseries. The first was the best (though they served cold coffee), with acres of glass houses full of fantastic colourful plants. It was a gardening club property which meant you couldn’t buy anything without joining (£5 for the first year and then £2 per year thereafter), it would certainly be worth it if you were local and a gardener, the prices and selection were very good. We however just browsed and enjoyed before our disappointing cups of coffee at the café.
We looked around a few more nurseries, they are really “everything for the home” shops, huge, but not that great really, but there are quite a few close together so I guess making a living is pretty hard, they had limited selection of plants considering they were nurseries, but maybe the competition from the gardening clubs is too much so they rely on their other products for profit.
From here we drove home prepared and had dinner followed by a quiet evening before bed. Foxy came to visit as we were settling so Diana and I watched him from the upstairs window as first he selected tasty bits before sneaking off behind the toi toi to eat them, and then later grabbed 3 lard sandwiches in his mouth and headed off over the fence, I presume back to the den and his family.
The next day we didn’t do much. I had a grocery shopping trip from hell, it took about 3 hours to go a couple of miles, get groceries and get back again. The traffic was horrendous, there weren’t parks anywhere, roads were blocked to the campervan because there were wide trucks doing “works”, the supermarket car parks either have height barriers, too small parking spaces or are too narrow inside the parking building for the truck. I tried 3 supermarkets to no avail, the road parks were all full, our usual car-park (which has a height barrier, but we can go around the barrier so do, (I presume for the rubbish trucks to pick up the skips but I don’t know why they bother with the barriers then??)had a market going on in it so there weren’t any parks there either. Eventually I parked a hundred metres or so from the nearest supermarket in a hardware/home store place hoping they wouldn’t ticket me. They are ferocious ticketers around here. We got a parking ticket the other day for £60, reduced to 30 if paid within 14 days, for being a few minutes late back to the truck. I was pissed off in the extreme… However thankfully they had written “Humber” as vehicle type instead of “Hymer” which I understand makes it invalid, so we have written a letter to that effect to the issuing council.
Anyway my trip to the supermarket continued to be trying, I got to the checkout, and tried to pay, but they don’t accept credit cards. Now my card is a debit card, i.e. it has the money loaded on it, but because it is issued by mastercard it is recognised as a credit card, so the very pompous checkout operator did her best to humiliate me and I had to go and get cash from the machine. Next problem was I had to try to carry all these groceries to the truck, I had 4 very huge recyclable bags full of heavy items, I could barely lift the bags and my arms and shoulders were just about falling off as I struggled along. I made it about 30 metres before just about crying with pain. I stopped at an office type place and asked a very ungracious man if I could leave two bags and come back. He begrudgingly said yes, as he barely stopped his conversation with a colleague. Even carrying two bags was a real struggle, I managed to get back to the truck and returned for the other two bags before again struggling back to the truck. By now I was only 150 cm tall but each arm was about 140cm long and my shoulder joints separated by about 30cm. In fact my shoulders and arms still ache today 2 days later!!
In the afternoon Di and I walked back up to North Finchley to browse through the market and have a coffee. Though a bit of a hike, it was much easier than taking the truck. Hilary stayed with Yvonne, painting a picture of a horse, and eating ice-cream in the sun.
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