April 26th Unusually for a Tuesday, it was a shopping day. Once that was done we did nothing at all. Huan has decided that she prefers to walk after dinner and not in the morning or after lunch. In the short term I will do the same, but after my next doctor’s appointment I may walk more than once a day. I must admit it was a pleasant evening’s walk. Here’s a view back towards the town from the other side of the bridge to somewhere.
Heading through the first little village we heard shouts of 罗博特, that’s the transliteration of Robert and is part of my Chinese name. Three young schoolboys were there, trying to practice their English; they need a bit more yet. They can ask some questions but they are unsure how to respond to the answers. Only one agreed to be photographed.
In the same village a farmer was using a machine to chop up vegetables. Huan thought that this machine was excellent; she thought people usually chopped things by hand. In fact, people do usually chop vegetables by hand; this chap was making food for his pigs.
Next is another photo of me getting Huan lost, the same village, a different road.
She soon realised where were going.
Do you like pineapples? I do, especially eaten straight from the farm, but I wasn’t so sure of this one. I decided that it would be best to leave it where it was.
All the way around Huan was trying to get me to take a photo of the sunset. Most of the time the sun was just too high in the sky but in the end we took this one.
We were heading towards the river; my plan was to walk back that way. You can see from this photo why I chose not to come this way; coming up was not so easy even before my operation!
This was our next sunset opportunity, guess what, this time the sun was too low.
I managed to avoid another set of stairs on the way home. Huan suggested going that way but I don’t feel up to climbing lots of stairs yet. Instead we took the road under the tunnel and added an extra kilometre, better for us.
April 27th “Where shall we go this evening dear?” I like to give her ladyship the choice now and then. “We can go the Shangri La way” she answered. Those of you who are regular readers will know that climbing up the hill behind Shangri La and then fighting our way down the hill is what brought on my problems and operation. Huan had not forgotten though and her plan, although she didn’t remember the entire route, would give us a shortish, (5k), pleasant evening walk. However, she was t(y)red before we had gone too far.
I forgot to take a photo to show you where we are definitely not allowed to go, not in the near future and maybe for even longer, but I did take some photos of the way we went.
At the end of this wide path there is the old ammunition dump and a farm. When they came into view Huan realised where we were. The farm had increased its number of dogs considerably since our last visit so Huan, as usual, took too many photos.
Our route took us in a small circle back to the main road where I asked Huan to take my photo next to the ‘smile’ in the sign. The alignment is not so good but at least I am smiling.
We decided to go home along the riverside and then spotted this track. Would we be able to go all the way home this way?
Coming up to our ‘dam’ I did have a little reconnoitre, but Huan reminded me that my sister would not be very impressed if I tried climbing up there. I could also see that even if I climber up to the path, there was no way from there up to our place.
Maybe there is a way through here?
Yes, even if I do have to go over backwards!
Huan managed it by going under; here she is coming out of the sun.
Did we behave ourselves? Well we think we did. We didn’t go past these warning signs, at least we didn’t ‘enter’. Did we exit? Well, that would be telling, wouldn’t it?
April 28th My choice today so I took us the other side of the dam where I had noticed that the corrugated metal wall blocking entry had been removed.
It would have been possible to go down the new steps on this side of the river but in view of the debris everywhere we decided against that. Little sister may have been angry with me again!
Soon we had to leave the beauty of the irrigation canal.
And today we went underneath the road to somewhere.
Passing the mansions on the hill we crossed the canal again and tried for a selfie.
Walking past the allotments, we heard the warning voice telling us to stay away from the end of the canal. I decided to try the other route and reached the end with no warning. Perhaps the motion detector is facing down only one path.
I did have an ulterior motive for choosing this route today and as I passed the (roofless) byre my signal was answered.
My bovine buddies all came to see me and as usual Huan took far too many photos.
I managed to get one final one of my own.
From the cows we passed through the village where all the children know me and took this panorama from the other side, on our way home.
Almost in the centre of the photo you can see the village school which is where a couple of the boys were heading. I had a peep around the gate and saw that there were quite a few more boys hanging around inside. Can you guess what they asked me, in Chinese of course? Just like young English boys, hanging around the bike sheds in my younger days, they were looking for illicit cigarettes. I guess they were disappointed that I didn’t have any.
April 29th Foreboding skies this evening so we took just a short walk around the town and river. It looks like there might be something happening tomorrow.
We found a gent playing one of those electronic wind instruments, had a chat with him and he gave us a couple of demos of the different sounds. He told us that the mouthpiece did not require saxophone prowess but I’m still not convinced.
Not many photos today, the last one is Huan gloating. She is happily enjoying an ice cream, a red bean ice cream, and of course I am not allowed to join in.
April 30th Saturday rolls round once a week and here it was again. Life seems to be almost back to normal now and the market was on again this week with what appeared to be more stalls and more people. There were chickens, ducks, geese and pigeons all over the place, plus a lot of farm vehicles with pork on the back and of course vegetables and Chinese medicine galore.
There was even a bird of a different type, an ostrich. Before the critics speak about the Chinese eating anything, I have in fact eaten ostrich, in the UAE, and it is farmed for its meat in many countries around the world.
The ‘backdrop’ that we saw last night had nothing to do with today, in fact there was a completely different backdrop in place. The two photos here show first a gent playing music on a natural musical instrument, a leaf and second a gent yodelling. I was very impressed by the leaf, not so much by the yodelling.
I started getting a little angry with the ‘phone photographers’ and having recently been ordered by wifey to avoid getting angry I left her to take pictures of the rest of the show.
My duty was to buy our last supply of Xinjiang bread while Huan was busy. I failed, the people were there but asked me to come back in the evening.
Do you think I could have gotten away with it if I had bought one of these little puppies instead? Unusually for here, they were only ¥300.00 each. At thirty five days old they were very cute and lovable but I didn’t really fancy having to sleep on the balcony!
We also found Bigfoot today; she was on her Dad’s electric car, chained up. That sounds terrible doesn’t it, but she was content there and happy enough to see us. Last time we saw her Dad, a few days ago, he told us that she is fourteen months old. They know that she will grow bigger but I am not sure if they know how much bigger!
Rain attacked after dinner but soon it relented enough for us to go out looking for our much loved Xinjiang bread. On the way I tried to get Huan to buy me something else, what I believe is a British Shorthair, grey. Unfortunately she refused, at least until I am old and housebound!
The inclement weather had us worried about our bread, would they still be there? No worries, the fire was still burning.
We were so happy that we asked if we could have a photo, our request was graciously accepted. PS I only dropped my mask for the photo opportunity!
As it’s the end of the month I thought I would share my ‘walk’ progress for April. With no long walks this month I was quite pleasantly surprised at the total. (Note to little sister, check the times, I am taking care.)
May 1st “The Lift-Your-Spirits Quote Book” compiled by Allen Klein, ISBN 0-517-16309-8, published in 2001. This month’s quote comes from the chapter “Creativity”. If you are seeking creative ideas, go out walking. Angels whisper to a man when he goes for a walk. (Raymond Inman) Bob’s PS – Try it, you have nothing to lose, except perhaps a little bit of midriff!
Happy Mayday to all, enjoy your worker’s playtime! Inclement weather precluded us from enjoying our morning, our afternoon and our evening. In fact, it rained all night!
May 2nd Back to the normal routine, Monday is shopping day. I’m still not doing any cooking yet so Huan is in charge of the shopping list. I did spot this in Baijiahui, I was going to say it was British but as it is now owned by Coca Cola perhaps not. For us here in Wuzhishan, it is just the bottled version though, no actual coffee shop.
The weather was not too good today either but we did get our for a stroll in the evening. Within minutes the intrepid explorer had found some bugs. We wondered if the third one was on its last legs, what with all the ants trailing behind it.
Mayday was yesterday so today is still a holiday. We were rather surprised therefore to find no tea shops open down by the river.
Bugsy was still busy and even managed to get one onto my face!
Sometimes there is no stopping the bug hunter and she was successful in finding one more before we turned for home.
When we did turn for home I made sure that we didn’t dawdle otherwise I’m fairly sure Huan would have found even more bugs. Speeding up had an extra benefit; we arrived home just before the rain decided to pay us another visit.
Another week bites the dust, only another two (or one, I’m not sure) until we can do some longer and more interesting country walks. Cue cautionary voices from the family! Hopefully your spring is turning out better than ours and that you are all taking care of yourselves too, we will be back at our usual time, in another week. Bieeeeeeee!
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