fresh old morning

Tis a fresh old morning out there. Not entirely true as the day is still relatively young. Fresh it is though. The garden would appear to have had a good soaking overnight. This is as it should be. The correct order of things.

It remains cloudy. Good job there is now a break between test matches. We need some sustained good weather, at least during the day. The next match is in Manchester. Doubly challenging when it comes to weather.

Enough of this meteorological drizzle, I mean drivel. I am expecting a new bag today. A Dr Duffel 70litre in mustard yellow. Seem to have lost my North Face duffel. This will no doubt turn up immediately after the delivery of the new bag. No matter. You can’t have too many duffel bags.

I used to spell duffel duffle. I still do really. It’s just that they market the Dr Duffel job as written so that’s what it is. The beauty of a duffle bag on expedition is its squashiness. Whilst hardshell suitcases are good for aircraft holds and for the battering they receive by the baggage handling system. 

All well and good if your ultimate travel destination requires sitting in airport lounges sipping champagne whilst en route but not so much when loading all your gear for an extended trip in a Land Rover.

Much planning has gone into this forthcoming jaunt to the point where we are taking a bag just for laundry. Ordinarily we use a hotel’s plastic laundry bag and just shove that in one of our bags. The filled laundry bag replaces the space of the clean clothes, ish.

However this trip we will be on the road for over a month. Makes sense to take a laundry bag. Despite the fact that we will be stopping at many a roadside inn, so to speak, these gaffs don’t generally provide a laundry service. Not that we would be daft enough to use a hotel laundry service.

Time was I’d be doing so much international travel that I’d often take dirty laundry with me and get it cleaned as soon as I reached the first destination of my next trip. I wasn’t paying then 🙂 On the second half of this trip we will be stopping at self catering accommodation with washing machines. I’m sure I’ll have enough pairs of pants to make it through the first two and a half weeks 🙂

It’s going to be a shorts and t shirts trip with a jumper thrown in for good measure and a waterproof top because our first destination is Donegal. Socks will not form part of the uniform.

Meanwhile back in Lincoln the wind has got up and it looks as if we are in for a typical British summer’s day. Time to make the tea.

Just harvested a couple of leek seed heads. The green ‘envelope’ had split open and they are now in a paper envelope in the shed. Didn’t want to risk waiting until the seeds had dried out on the stem in case they just fell on the ground or were scoffed by pesky birds.

It has been noted that the shed is in need  of a bit of a tidy. This is so. Need to figure out where to put the gazebo canopies. Loft probs. Johnny boy arrives home for a few days later and he can help me.

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