Yesterday I went on a "Health Walk" organised by the local authority. They are weekly, for an hour, on public footpaths around the village. For those across the pond, the UK is networked with old paths which were originally for workers to go from their cottages to their places of work, or people to go to the church. They go through woods and across fields, and the land owners are required to keep them usable as they are defined as "rights of way". Round here, they seem to do this really well, with cleared lines across the crops. (Back thirty five years ago, I did find a stile (wooden structure for crossing fence, owned by the local authority) covered with barbed wire, while parts of the hedges were smoothed down to allow the hunt to jump them.)

Anyway, the walk set off along paved village estate paths, then through a publicly owned meadow, a cut down through a wood by a loud alsatian in the garden of a larger house, across a field of ripening rape (the stuff oil comes from - canola?) with poppies, like an Impressionist painting, past a car breakers' yard, and up through another wood to the open land belonging to the village. The pace was easy, and i felt better after it. I'll be going on more of these. There's another one at the next village as well.

I think it's run on the principle that money spent on organising these (one leader, and two others to make sure no-one drops behind un-noticed) is minimal, and it helps to save money on health issues later.

I then set off for the cherry farm, and remembered I had to sort out the insurance for the flats, so did that, bought cherries, bean and pea plants. Back at home, I put more soil in the raised bed for the legumes, dug out some compost from the bin and mixed it in with the soil, topped it off with some bought "topsoil". In my book, topsoil does not come with included black plastic. It was much more like a compost as it had no mineral component. Anyway, I planted out the dwarf runner beans, and some peas, and then watered everything. I had managed to kill the seeds I tried myself for these plants by allowing them to overheat. This morning I put in some seeds directly for the climbing runner beans.

The cherries are "Early Rivers" and they are much sweeter than last years, which were late - these are really early. I suppose eating cherries counts as a healthy activity!

Penny