In the middle of last week the BBC were forecasting that today could be better than yesterday, and that the temperature might even touch 20° C. Well, that shows just how wrong their forecasts can be because the reality is that apart from some sunny spells to start the day, most of today is going to be very dull, but probably dry. It is also going to feel cold with the temperature only reaching as high as 11° C. Tomorrow could be a bit like yesterday, but with sunny spells instead of sunshine, and just 13° C.
 

  My very high blood glucose, and the promise of a warm and sunny afternoon, were good enough reasons to skip both breakfast and lunch, and go for a walk. My initial plan was to more or less duplicate the walk I did a fortnight ago - about 3.2 miles, but then I had an idea that would enable me to extend the walk as much as I was comfortable with.

  The plan was to walk towards Clock House station, but I could turn back at Lower Sydenham or New Beckenham stations, and get a train back to Catford if I felt I needed it. Fortunately something happened that I hoped might happen. I didn't wear a coat, and that always seems to make walking easier and/or more comfortable. More importantly was that feeling warm in the sunshine stopped so many aches and pains.

  As I approached Clock House station my knees were feeling slightly stiff, and some leg muscles were just starting to complain a bit. I must admit it seemed worse than that when walking down the steps towards the platform, although strangely, walking up steps in the approach to the station, seemed a lot easier than walking down steps.



  I had decided it was time to give my Canon EOS 1200D camera an airing yesterday. It was my only DSLR camera I had bought new, but once I became confident about it's use I subsequently bought second hand cameras. I had my camera around my neck, and read for action as I walked over Catford Bridge, and there in the station was a train that I had never photographed before. It wasn't a great shot, but as a temporary measure it filled in a blank on my huge spreadsheet of all the trains I have photographed.
  I am not a bus spotter, and I have no idea if real bus spotters bother with Dial A Ride buses, but this one presented a clean view (albeit with the sun on the wrong side of it), and with my camera still ready for action, I took this shot.
  This bus also presented itself to me, and got snapped. This was the route (the 171) that took me to my last gig when I saw Caz and Steve in The Honour Oak pub a week or so back. Yesterday I learned that despite Carrie thinking they had scared all the customers away, they have just been awarded a residency at the pub on Thursday evenings. I may be using this bus again on Thursday.
  Suddenly all the buses started posing for me....sort of. The 202 is a useful route. It passes Angela's house (although currently that is off limits), and goes to several places where gigs happen.
  After that last bit of "bus spotting" I entered the park. I would usually divert off the main path to visit the Vineries, but yesterday I bypassed that and continued along the main path. Upon coming to the confluence of the two rivers (Ravensbourne opposite the camera, and The Pool coming in from the left) I noted, and had to photograph the shopping trolley where the two rivers mix.
  I don't know if the ducks think my camera is a bag of food, but several seem to approach me lately. This nice looking hen came to within about 4 ft of me, and then sat down posing for my camera.
  The dull brown colours make me think this could be a moth instead of a butterfly. All I do know is that the strong sunshine seemed to slow down this and other butterflies enough that I managed this semi decent snap of this one, and a few bad snaps of others.
  It was strange because this crow walked a parallel path to me, just about 6ft apart for maybe 20 feet. Once it moved out of the shade, and into the sun, I managed this fair snap of it.
  I was mildly peeved that as I neared Lower Sydenham station I missed seeing one train heading towards London. It was quickly followed by the train above heading towards Hayes (Kent). I only just managed to get onto the platform in time to get a snap of the back of the train as it left the station. The significance was that 707009 was another new train for my huge spreadsheet. I have just 7 class 707 trains left to photograph to semi complete the series. In reality there are more to get because some of my snaps are of the trains in their Southwest Railway livery. It would be good to get the entire set in South Eastern livery.
  I guess I was lucky that on a day out when I was really just out walking, apart from a train home, I managed to snap yet another train for my collection. I slightly diverged from the straightest route to call at Kent House station. There were two reasons for this. The first is that I can only remember being on Kent House station once before, and I had been in a rush than, and hadn't had a look around.

  As well as seeing the station at platform level (it's on an embankment) I was wondering if it was possible to see the remains an embankment that carried a spur that connected with the Crystal Palace line near Birkbeck. A little later, when I compared where I was when I passed the remains of the embankment in relation to the station, I realised it would actually have been quite a long way down the line from the station. In the meantime, I managed to get a snap of 375703, another train for my spreadsheet.

  From Kent House station I walked to Clock House station. It is not a long walk, but it ends with a staircase up to road level, directly opposite Clock House station using what seems the most direct route. I was starting to feel tired, and I wondered how bad it would be going up those stairs. As I noted near the top of the page, it wasn't bad at all. I can't say I ran up the stairs, far from it, but it didn't really seem taxing to go up at a steady rate.

  One the other side of the main road I had to go down a similar lot of steps down the platform at the station. Going down seemed a lot harder. I could really feel the tension in my knees. The good thing is that by purely chance, I didn't have much more than a five minute wait for a train back to Catford Bridge. The walk from home to Clock House was close to exactly 4 miles. When the walk from Catford Bridge station to home was added on it came to a walk of 4.4 miles.

  I was most encouraged that I seem to be regaining some of my previous fitness back. I was definitely tired after the walk, but a fortnight ago, when I walked 3.2 miles, I felt really knackered when I got home. If only we had more weather like yesterday I could soon be up to doing 6 mile walks again, and unlike during lockdown, I am free to travel to the seaside where I could dare to attempt even longer walks.

  I didn't have any breakfast when I set out on my walk, and it was almost 3pm when I got home. I was feeling a bit peckish. I was supposed to be heavily controlling what I ate because of starting the day with a very high (10.7mmol/l) blood glucose reading. I semi gave in and scoffed two small packets of crisps. If I had eaten something safer later on I might have gotten away with it.

  Before I got too relaxed I copied all the pictures I had taken to my PC, and made a start selecting and editing those I would use. I then had a lie down, and read for a bit before having a short snooze. It was not long before dinner time when I woke up, and I had not prepared a safe dinner. I started watching the first of three Star Treks, and finished the last of my photo editing during commercial breaks.

 Also during a commercial break I made my dinner. It was not a wise choice, but it was tasty. It was a double portion of instant noodles - one mushroom flavour, and the other Kimchi flavour. I could have gotten away with it if it were breakfast, but not as an evening meal. I then made things worse when watching Have I Got New For you, and ate two small bags of Hula Hoops because I still felt hungry.

  Maybe it was the nice snooze I had, or maybe it was the excitement of good walk, but I didn't seem to be in a rush to get to sleep last night. I read in bed for maybe 20 minutes, but it was not long after I turned out the light before I was in some sort of deep sleep. I didn't seem to need to get up to pee many times last night. The only bit of dream I remember was a dream about being back working in a telephone exchange, but it is too technical to describe (even I could hardly identify some of the new equipment !).

  This morning I could feel a little bit of stress in a few muscles as a result of my walk, but none could actually be described as pain. I was almost in quite good shape except for my blood glucose level. On the plus side it was on the safe side of the red line, but I still considered 9.7mmol/l to be a lot higher than desired. The paradox is that my entire calorie consumption was probably quite small yesterday, and with the calorie expenditure of the walk, I was possibly in something like dieting territory, but the timing of my high carbohydrate intake was just wrong for my morning blood glucose measurement.

  I decided that this morning I would have breakfast again, and it was partly brought about by the impending depressing weather. Of course that depends on the weather forecast being right. At the moment there is still some weak sunny spells. It seems the the clouds are coming in from the east, and have now largely overtaken the sun. Shame really because a lot of the sky was still blue half an hour ago.
  This was the view out the back of my house at the northern sky taken at 9.25am. The sky looks lovely, and fairly bright sunshine can be seen. It looked like this for my walk yesterday, but hidden off to the right of the picture are those blasted clouds that are going to ruin the rest of the day. I've just checked the latest revision to the forecast, and I was surprised to see that full sunshine is predicted for 11am (or an hours time as I write this), but from midday dark grey clouds are predicted to fill the sky until gone 5pm.

  I haven't heard a thing from Angela, and once again the chance of our lunchtime date seems as close to zero as it can be. In view of the impending weather I am not expecting to go out at all today, and maybe that might be good because it is possible I will be having a great big SciFi omnibus book delivered today (it is coming all the way from America - something I didn't know when I ordered it). I expect I will have a quiet day doing some reading, and maybe I'll do a couple of items of laundry.