The Wayfaring Path

It was all going so well… until it wasn’t.

I arrived on Tuesday last week and scheduled a few days quietly exploring the local villages, and then we had planned a big weekend adventure over to Ludlow, to stay with friends and check out the castle (me) and breweries (Regan). For quite a few weeks, however, my back had been feeling a bit out of sorts – I slipped a disc last year, and I think the combo of lots of cleaning and moving boxes around before I left and the very very very long flight made it weak. Long story short, I popped it again while getting ready to leave the house on Saturday, basically couldn’t move, spent the day in bed, and had to cancel the Ludlow trip. Gutted. Especially as I don’t think we’ll be able to catch up with our friend any time soon. It’s getting better but it’s been a real bummer.

But anyway…

I just adore where we are – a very quiet and beautiful part of the Cotswolds, far from the madding crowd (and the tourist buses). Wednesday we spent ambling around the local area, and walked in to Amberley, the nearest village with a cafe. It’s a brilliant wee spot, and the church has a small shop and cafe inside, with good coffee and yummy cakes. The shop has some grocery bits and bobs and some really interesting treats – passionfruit curd, spiced plum and sloe gin chutney, and chippies in all kinds of flavours.

The cafe and shop are run by volunteers, and I reckon we’ll have met everyone in the village by the time we leave here! Dogs are allowed in, and we’ve noticed all the places we’ve been into have doggie treats – all very civillised, especially if you’re a dog! Our hosts/neighbours have two dogs, one which is super snuggly and one that’s a bit barky, but apparently he’ll get used to us with time. There are two horses in the field opposite, and some sheep up behind us.

But best of all is the common, up a fairly steep path behind the cottage. In the summer cattle roam freely on the common, there are no fences and they sometimes wander down into the village, so cattle grids are common in most of the driveways. People drive carefully and allow the cows to wander as they please, and it feels like an ancient way to farm – a shared area (“common ground”) where the cows can get exercise, forage on different grasses and leaves, seek shade under trees, and be together as a wider family unit. In the winter they are under cover and warm. It feels like a good life for a cow, and a far cry from shade-less paddocks and intensive farming. Long may it continue.

On the Thursday we walked down the steep path (there’s a lot of steep paths!) to Nailsworth, and on the way we saw a deer! Just a wild deer, not a farm animal, a part of the landscape as deer have been for a very long time. It was magical! It’s early summer and so green, lovely fresh leaves everywhere. I really appreciate how grasses are left to grow long and flowering “weeds” tumble over dry stone walls. It’s shambolic and bucolic and I love it!

Nailsworth is a cute wee town with good charity shops and some interesting independent stores. The shops all smell lovely! There’s an independent bookstore, a health food store, a homewares shop that’s on my if-I-ever-win-Lotto-I’m-coming-straight-here list, and a big church and cosy library. I feel very much at home here and am already dreading leaving. More cake – so many good cakes here! – and then a slow walk up the hill in the rain, with Regan walking behind me and gently pushing me up the hill! I’m hoping all the hills will undo all the cakes!

Friday saw us walk down to Nailsworth to catch a bus to Stroud. Sitting together on the bus, watching the green trees and golden buildings go by felt like we were properly on holiday! Stroud is a bigger town and has a lot of great shops, plus a Wetherspoons pub for a very cheap lunch – NZ$7 for beans, egg, hash brown and tomato! And bottomless coffee for a few dollars. Amazing. It’s a bit of a hippy town, where Extinction Rebellion was formed, as well as being a creative hub. A woman I was chatting to in a shop said “if you stand in the High Street and throw a rock, you’ll definitely hit either a yoga teacher or an artist!”. So, my kind of town!

There’s a shop with things made by local people – often those places can be a bit twee or crappy but holy moly everything was so good! Beautiful hand woven blankets, amazing hand-drawn maps, and letterpress-printed written word artworks by a local guy who is a beat poet from the 60s. I loved it all! We are going in again on Saturday for the weekly market and I’m really looking forward to it.

My back was getting really sore though, sore enough that when we went through Nailsworth on the bus and I spied an acupuncture clinic, I went in for advice and to book an appointment. Herbs in hand and an appointment booked for a couple of weeks time I walked back up the hill but it was really difficult and I felt pretty awful.

Saturday morning dawned and I jumped in the shower to get ready for our weekend trip to Ludlow. After my shower, when drying my leg, I felt a shooting pain in my back and had a horrible feeling that was the end of our weekend adventure. I laid down and hoped for the best, but within half an hour I knew I wasn’t going ANYWHERE that day except bed. I know what to do now with such things, so sent Regan off to get a bag of frozen peas and some decent painkillers and I settled down with a book, totally gutted to be missing the weekend, and freaking out that I’d be broken the whole trip.

I iced my back every hour, took quite a lot of Panadol, rubbed topical pain relief into my back, spent most of the day in bed, and did some VERY gentle exercise. After a good night’s sleep I was better on Sunday than I expected, but I’m still feeling “unsafe” with my back. Wanting to avoid hills, happily Amberley is along the ridge line from us, so I was able to slowly hobble along there on Sunday arvo for some carrot cake. Carrot cake always makes things better. It was a quiet weekend, and a real disappointment, but all in all we were both so grateful to be in our lovely cottage, safe and warm and together. So it’s actually pretty good when you think about it.

I was able to get in for an earlier appointment and had my first proper acupuncture session with a proper Traditional Chinese Medicine (TCM) practitioner. She is very good, caring and knowledgeable, and I feel I’m in good hands. It’s a bit scary not having a GP and being so far from home when things go wrong, but she’s been great – giving me advice over WhatsApp and making me feel taken care of. It’s a holistic modality, so we are working through All The Things not happy in my body, and with my track record that’s actually taking quite a while. But I’m interested in learning about TCM and feel like it’s a good thing that’ll help me be healthier and stronger from this point forward.

So, a mixed bag of a week but basically we are so happy to be here we can deal with pretty much anything. I’m the happiest and most relaxed I’ve been for years and and so incredibly grateful to be here. Next week I’m starting back working, so it’ll be a bit more adaptation to figure out how all that’s going to go.