Rainy Days Again

Heavens, what a lot of rain and it seems impossible to avoid it - so frustrating that I've had to get all my wintery raincoats and everything out in the middle of August. I guess we can only hope for a surprisingly fine Autumn.

As usual, I haven't had time to write lately because I've been absolutely up to my neck in work. The saying 'live to work or work to live' is becoming increasingly pertinent. Progress seems so terribly slow and yet I'm beavering away every day. I will be glad to get training for walks leaders organised and also my downloadable walks leaflets finished. Thankfully, the AONB has just taken on Matthew Hensby, a highly proficient work experience man who will, I think, be able to help me in the next few weeks - phew. It seems incredible that I have just five weeks or so left until the end of my 12 month contract.

I'm very pleased with our partners Node and particularly the efforts of Jo Armstrong, who is currently working on some improvements to the functionality of the tours. I'm also very grateful to Simon Houghton of the Public Rights of Way team, who has recently instigated improvements to signage and more on the Braunton on the Move multimedia tour route. As for me, I've been working hard to go through all the interviews we've done over the past few months (all 9.5 hours of it) and catalogue what is said when, to enable long-suffering Neil to easily find the bits that are needed for films to go on the web-site. It'll be great to have this multimedia element on the site and it'll be good to use some interesting parts of the interviews that we were not able to use on the Explorers.

At the end of last week there was a very rare hour or so of sunshine and so, armed with my camera, I decided to have some time out. I went to explore St Brannock's church and take pictures of it for the web-site, along with photos of the Peace Tree, which was planted in the churchyard by American soldiers who trained in Braunton prior to D-Day. I found both and met the flower ladies who were adorning the already-beautiful church for a wedding the next day. Then I ventured across the road to St Brannocks Well Close, in pursuit of a holy well said to exist nearby. I didn't find it straight away but, after locating the pretty Roman Catholic chapel nearby I gained entry (much appreciated) and found the picturesque heart-shaped well next to it. More about this on the web-site!

As for my running, I've sadly injured my knee. I'm not sure how it happened, something went when I was running downhill recently, and unfortunately it's getting worse not better so it's unlikely that I'll be doing the Human Race at the end of the month. Sad, but there's sure to be more to do later on.

Well, I hope you're avoiding the rain better than I am! I'm off now to address the rest of my 'things to do today'.