I felt lousy yesterday morning. After a day of too much rest I felt quite painfully creaky. Most of the pain, although discomfort might be a better description than pain, was in my upper body. My legs did feel a bit stiff, but it was my neck, shoulders, and upper back that seemed a lot worse. Some might say it was all a symptom of Covid-19, and maybe it was, but who really knows ?

  I knew the cure was to get active again, and so I prepared to go out for a walk. Before doing so I had a shower, and then I watered the garden. Then I had to grit my teeth to get myself out the door, and moving. I can't say I had a definite destination in mind, but I had a notion I'd like to travel east for this walk.

  One possibility was to visit Manor House gardens. It is a park I don't think I had even been in before. The last time I walked in that direction was quite a few years ago, and I was feeling dreadfully out of condition, and didn't make it that far. Yesterday I found that a bit surprising because in term of miles walked it is not that far to the park. I think it was under 2 miles to the entrance I used. I had to take quite a convoluted path home to take the walk up to 5 miles - the distance I want to aim for in most of my walks now.
  The first hurdle was to get to the top of Mountsfield park. I found it very hard going this time, and when I look back at it I can't quite work out in so much as I don't know where to point the blame. I can't work out if it was my legs or chest that were complaining most. At the top I wasn't gasping for breath, and 30 seconds after reaching the summit my breathing was 90% normal. I guess it was my legs that were my weakness, and yet it did feel that I couldn't breathe as deeply as I might have desired. From here onwards the going got much easier.
  After walking down to Hither Green Station, and passing through the subway, technically part of the station, with a face mask (!!!) I kept an eye out for Park Fever. As the sign says in the picture, this shop sells, among other things, craft beer. All too often that is a way of saying well over priced beers, but I would have like to have window shopped (because I am currently keeping out of shops). At least I know where it is for future reference.
  As I remarked further up the page, I was quite surprised at how little I had walked to reach Manor House Gardens. One of the first things I saw, soon after entering the park, was this ring of seats made from slices of a tree. The name tree henge got stuck in my brain despite it being a silly name.
  Manor Housed Gardens is a posh sort of park, and so has posh birds like swans in it's big lake. I think the park reminded me of parks when I was a kid - very formal with lots of railings. It is probably a credit to Lewisham Council, and the landscape/gardening company they hire, that they have such a variety of parks.
  This is the Manor House after which the park was named. I think it was originally the home of a "gentleman farmer" when it was all fields around these parts. It is now a library, and used to hold the council's historical collection, but I think that was moved out when it was left poorly maintained for many years, but it looks in good nick now.
   This was a sight I had never seen before. This "Bus Gate" is located outside one of the entrances to Manor Park (a different, and smaller park). A little bit of research shows that the idea is that only buses and other authorised vehicles may pass through it, and anyone else collects a fine. There is a lot of controversy about them, and some say they may not be legal, and some, elsewhere in the country, have not been signed correctly, and people have won appeals against fines because of it.
  I was pretty tired when I got home from my 5 mile walk, but I wasn't shattered. Walking 5 miles is probably now "easier" than when I was more commonly walking about 3 miles. My legs, particularly my calves, seemed to still ache a bit, but most other aches had vanished...or if they hadn't vanished they had faded to the point where I could just ignore them. Most important was that I had protected the middle toe of my right foot enough that, while still sore, actually seemed to have healed a bit.

  Before I did anything more than strip off my outdoor clothes, I weighed myself, and checked my blood glucose level. I noted a dip in my weight, and my blood glucose was not longer cause for concern. It was still high enough that I managed to convince myself that I didn't need to eat anything after getting home - no treats of ice cream or anything ! I did drink, but only sugar free soft drinks.

  During the afternoon I did rest a fair bit, but I was "processing" photos and videos not that long after I got home. I felt I had enough energy left do stuff if needed, but nothing was urgent enough to stop me enjoying a bit of lazyness. I didn't quite achieve eating as little as I wanted to, but I did resist having nothing more than a small nibble before dinner time. My dinner was BLC - bacon, lettuce and tomato, but not in a roll or sandwich. It was just those three things on a plate with a dressing of excess (as usual) mayonnaise.  I had a single Pink Lady apple, and a pack of sugar free vanilla wafers for dessert. A bit later on I had a snack of "spicky" sticks that are Aldi's version of Peperami.

   I went to bed fairly early last night, and I was just starting to fall asleep when I received a phone call. To my surprise it was Sue. I haven't heard much from her for ages. It seems she has managed to get herself in trouble again. She was not in a good way. As well as a lot of tears, it sounded like she was drunk too. It is hard to by sympathetic to someone when you can hardly make out what they are saying, and can't stick to the point. I did my best to listen to her tales of woe, but they seemed to keep changing. I shouldn't have done it, but I had to point out that she was contradicting herself. She hung up on me at that point.

  It took a while to get to sleep after that, and I think it influenced my dreams, but I can't remember why now. I seemed to get about the right amount of hours of sleep, but I feel I got up far too early this morning. I probably should have gone back to bed. Right now I am still trying to work out how I feel. Two things I do know is that my weight is still OK this morning, although I had hoped it might be a little lower. The same is true of my blood glucose level. It was 8.6mmol/l, and that is a damn sight better than yesterday morning's 10.3mmol/l. It still needs to be lower though.

  On the whole I think I probably feel a bit better than yesterday morning - or I have recovered from the stiffness of sleep faster. I feel I ought to get more exercise done today to help get that blood glucose down a bit more. I have this insanely optimistic idea that I could manage another long walk today. I'll have to check a map, but I am thinking I could probably manage to get up to Blackheath to take pictures of the 5 (I think) ponds on the heath. The difficulty may be that it would use up half my 5 mile target just getting to the edge of the heath, and walking around it could add a few more miles. I'll have to think about this a bit more....