20240416 Leaving England
Location: Southwest London, UK
Distance: 12.6km
Route:
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Woke up on Saturday and went for a walk around a busy Richmond Park. Saw some deer, looked at the deer, and bought a cappuccino from the little café. It was a beautiful morning and the paths were heaving. Later that day I saw friends and then the family visited my parents house, where I am now staying having left the flat in Bristol last week. That evening we went out for a curry. My mum made a cake.
Two days later I repeated the same walk around Richmond Park. I stared at the deer again, but this time the whine of the peloton freewheeling furiously down Broomfield Hill was thankfully absent. Fewer people were at the café. On the return leg I stopped at Lizzie's Cafe for a bacon roll and a coffee. I sat listening to a phone-in about the proposed UK smoking ban and watched live footage of the Olympic torch lighting ceremony from a deserted Olympia - a beautiful jobless moment.
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In two days we leave the UK, first to Spain, then to LA, then to San Diego. I am busy checking the snow levels in the southern California mountains of San Jacinto and the High Sierra (slightly above average) and debating whether to send the ice axe and micro-spikes to Idyllwild or Kennedy Meadows. Briefly, I was panicked to learn about a mass cicada emergence across North America ("cicada-geddon"). Such an event occurs just once every several centuries and promises to be a ghastly festival of insect birth, death and reproduction. Thankfully we should be unaffected out on the west coast.
Overall feeling great and having a lovely time.
