2020 lost year, plans postponed

We had planned our long walk last year but in March as we planned our training buildup for midsummer, our normal frenzied jet setting twenty first century world started shutting down.

The daily and weekly commutes, the motorway jams that our long walk was going to replace for just one symbolic commute back home, were themselves replaced by what felt like a creeping house arrest.

As the gloom descended on all our social lives, we were rescued by our distance from London and the fields and hedgerows of the East Anglain Heights as they burst into life bathed in one of the sunniest Springs on record.

The pages below chart our daily escapes up the hills or across the fields over 13 weeks from the Spring Equinox to the Summer solstice when we emerged into what we vainly dreamed would be the other side, but which turned down into the most gloomy winter since the blackouts and three day weeks when I was a boy.

Spring Equinox 2020

MarcH 21

This was the week we launched our blog and website and this was oour first post:

We started planning this challenge at the very end of 2019 around the time that China was celebrating the start of their New Year

We thought it would be challenge enough then, but we did not realise that a new virus was finding a home in us as we joined together in happy celebration.

Today I was sent home to work and the public houses where we like to gather after work were closed to the public until further notice.

We accept these decisions made on our behalf because we believe that they are informed by scientific research and understanding of the mathematics of disease propagation.

Just 100 years ago Europe was ravaged by war and flue and the limitations of our knowledge left many dying from secondary bacterial infection rather than that virus. Now we have vaccines and antibiotics that like fools we shun or overuse and discover the consequences, hopefully before it is too late.

We believe that an improved understanding of this world and the life on it is the best way to protect it for our future selves.

We have not given up and we still hope to fulfil our challenge this midsummer if we can.

week 2

MarcH 28

We had already realised that this was not going to be over anytime soon and decided that 2020 would have to be a roll over year

Today the sun is our side of the equator at noon. The sun has been shining all week,

The world is in the grip of COVID -19

Our planned walk may have to be postponed by another year.

So all the more time to prepare, train and garner the support that our scientists need to protect our world and all the life on it from the threats it all to easily unwittingly become realities before we are ready to face them.

Easter 2020

These were the Easter weeks when the grief of Covid started making its mark in the UK.

As these figures from the UK Office for National Statistics looking back at last year show us:

This chart from travel prior to lockdowns suggest how actviely we had been carrying the killer around the globe.

We were still out walking and blogging our pictures of the Spring fields and flowers

Well right now my family lucky and safe and we are all at home enjoying the sunshine and short daily walks for exercise in the Spring fields that keep us fit and sane. The blackthorn seems more brilliant white than usual this year, but the darkness of COVID is still spreading through the networks that unite our world, as most are now separated from their loved ones and cooped up in small city rooms to block transmission.

The super moon is closing in and tugging us slightly harder in her direction perhaps to provide some welcome respite from the impending gloom?

St Marks Day

April 25

Another week of lockdown in our United Kingdom and much of our ever more United World

I saw my first swallow of summer swooping low over the bright yellow dandilions on the track up the chalk downs above our Cambridge home. The larks were rising into the setting sun on the fiftieth Earth Day this wednesday their sound unusually triumphant above the eerily silent roads and skies

Nobody raised a glass in the George and Dragon this week to celebrate our patron saint, but the yellow hammers were dancing along the hedge tops as the sun went down on St Georges.

The blooming blackthorn that helped us through the first two weeks of lockdown and given way to the cherries in the third week and the apple blossom especially bountiful this year reached a peak last week.

This week the cow parsley has lept up to its frothy heads and the fresh greens of the ash, hornbeam and field maple have unfurled into the endless sunshine and the clear blue skies that raised our hearts a little these last few weeks. Only the ash seemed reluctant to let its wiry leaves loose from its tight black buds, perhaps fearing a late frost, but now are yielding, like the swallows, to the longer days and higher noons as our end of this spinning world moves ever closer, to its summer peak. I notice it too, just little more each time that I venture out of my home office to bathe in the midday warmth and stretch my soul, and fear our planned midsummer madness may have to wait another year.

Yesterday, the children played, up on the downs again and the dog ran, raising sprites in the setting sun, from the grey dandi clocks already gone to seed and today, Mark’s day, the whitethorn started breaking its darling creamy buds a whole week early from its month of May.

May day

May arrived with the lambs to the downs this week in lock down Cambridge.

And April left us with a flurry showers

So just a splash this year?

And a fresh set of flowers

week 7

May 9

Europe is past the first peak of Covid 19 but, the celebrations are muted like those of VE day 75 years ago, since the war is not yet over.

Like my father did 75 years ago, I count myself as fortunate to be one of the lucky ones. My war has been spent safely home with my family enjoying the bright Spring sunshine and the steadily lengthening days.

Joyful buttercups unfolding on the downs.

This week the house martins arrived and were collecting mud for their nests from a rare puddle on the chalky lane on the downs. Occasional swifts glide high over our heads, and hares covort on the field of beet sprouting green from the slightly damper soil.

The barley’s ears are turning a dusty green, whilst the last lazy ash buds burst into life or stand gaunt taken by the ash dieback that has spread from the east.

A sad reminder of those who will not live to see this special Spring turn to Summer

week 8

May 16

This week the nights were cold and the tender young fronds of the ash trees on the downs were blackened by the ground frost, but the hawthorn has kept its cream fresh a few days longer.

I like many have been frozen and furloughed this week and am trying to stay busy and save money by wasting a little less and growing a little more than usual.

..but the frosty nights kept the bright fresh greens lingering a few days longer on the hills.

..and the cow parsley reluctant to shed its last petals and set its seed

Week 9

23rd May

The death rate continues to drop and spring is getting closer to summer as the annual temperature peaks again this week. The cow parsley is gone over to seed, the horse chestnut candles are almost burnt out.

Ox eyes gaze yellow bright lashing radiant white up in the heat of the high noon day sun. Splashes of red have popped up to alert us of the approaching midsummer solstice and remind us of the war dead. Leaving sweet thorny roses to bask in the hedges in the evening and morning sun even as May’s creamy yellow withers to brown.

The fields and hedges are blooming brightly now

We walk the dog later now, as we seek the comfort of the setting sun and our shadows stretch longer across the swaying fields of barley.

Week 9

30th May

One of our neighbours up on the hill emerged from the darkness of lockdown, but he may have taken a risk too far.

Rough winds shook the darling buds of May this week

but some times the eye of heaven burned bright to herald the end of this silent Spring.

and Ox eyes beamed brightly back.

 Week 11

June 6th

Into flaming June and the dusk is not racing away from us each day like it was, the sun, as if tiring is slowing ready to turn back in three weeks time.

I suspect a badger with a nose for honey left these bumble bees mourning their early demise and they are not alone.

Week 12

13th June

 This week the elderflowers passed their cordial best, bottled up with gin to revive our memories of summer heat as the undertain days of autumn draw close.

We managed a loop of 50km looping up one tributary of our river Cam, the Granta that splits near our home climbing high on its east bank soon after dawn to follow the rising sun, before turning westwards in the midday heat to cross the chalky watershed before turning to follow the west bank of the Cam itself before setting wearily back down with the evening sun into the valley as the sun.

Week 12

21st June

This week thirteen marks the end of our unlucky quarter turn from the spring equinox into the heat of our northern summer. Yesterday was the mid-summer day we planned to walk the long way home, but we hope, the world’s health and fate permitting to make another attempt next year.

The path we planned remains, as do those our crazy scheme sought to help.

With the countdown reset, we will continue to document our route and new plan, to interest others who seek to support us.

Midsummer sun set in June 2020. What will 2021 be like?