Walking: Failing at a local walk

I was a little ill a while ago and one of the things I like to do when I'm recovering is to go for a bit of a walk to help stretch my body out after being stuck indoors for a few days and to get some fresh air into my sinuses and lungs.  I had previously thought about taking a walk in the mountain, but then the sensible part of my brain realised that probably be a bit too much to start with and I decided to go on a local walk instead.

I did think that a local walk would be easy enough to plan and do, especially after having a good look at my OS map (and a quick check on the app to make sure it was up to date).  However, it didn't exactly go to plan.  In fact, it didn't go to plan at all.  Firstly, the path I had originally planned to take was closed, which I had kind of expected as there has been a lot of infrastructure done to the area due to the large road works taking place and they have been doing some work on changing the way the water drains off the hills onto the road (or not onto the road).  But then the second route I tried to take was also blocked by a lot of fencing and, I'm guessing, the same work that had shut off the first.  However, the weird thing about this path block is that there was a new footpath sign there pointing in the direction you can no longer, not just on one place but two.  This is a little bit confusing.

After skirting around the fencing I got onto a bike way, which I followed in the same direction I had originally planned on going in the hope it would get me to the path I had mapped out earlier.  There was a stile at this part so I thought that this path at least was still accessible.  However, this also turned out to not be the case.  The route was relatively easy to find, but there were a number of places were there had obviously been stiles at one point, but they weren't there anymore.  I did double check to make sure I was one one of the public footpaths as I never like walking on someone's private land when there is no established path there, but it all matched up and I also wasn't the only person walking that route that day as there was also a couple also trying following a map.  We got through the section but did, unfortunately, end up right outside someone's house.  This is never where you want to end up, but we were able to get back onto the road and out of their way pretty quickly.

I had planned on having a relatively long walk that day, but after the complications of the morning I decided to just call it for that day and try again at some other time.  When I got home I did double check the route again and do some searches to see if there was any information on the changes being made to the area, but couldn't find any.  It was a little bit frustrating, not due to the possible changes in route and access, but because the information about these possible changes were not readily available.  I'm not sure if it's worth contacting the local authority to find out what is happening as I don't want to make the same mistake again in the future and I'm obviously not the only one making this mistake.  Hopefully the next time I attempt to go for a local walk I'll have a bit of a better outcome.

August 2023 Budget

This month has been a bit of an interesting month financially as not only did we have a few things going on, but it was also a five weeks month which means there's a bit of an overlap with some of the bills.  So, how did it go?

Our standard bills have basically remained the same as always, though as our gas usage was pretty low this month which should hopefully mean that we won't need to put much, if any, money towards it in September.  I've also been able to reduce my mobile bill a bit more as well, using the We Are 8 app, so I'm now paying around £20 per month less than I was before - which actually works out at about £1000 a year so I'd say it was a little work well spent.

We also managed to do well on our eating out/ takeaway budget, keeping within the limits of what we'd given ourselves.  This is quite a satisfying outcome for us as it's one of the areas I wanted us to focus on this month.  I have to admit it has been particularly helped by the fact that we haven't had too many days off together this month, but we have also been a little more mindful of what we're spending and Ed has helped by doing the cooking on the days I really haven't had the will to, which is when we would have normally just gotten takeaway.

Unfortunately the same cannot be said for our grocery spending, which has been over budget again and I know exactly who the culprit is - snacking.  Our weekly shops fit into the budget just fine, but it's the spending on additional food that we do on an almost daily basis that is taking us over budget.  So I need to decide whether I just bite the bullet and buy the snacking things with our general grocery shop, greatly bringing down the price as we'd be buying in bulk but with the possibility I'd eat most of it in one go, or we remove snacking almost completely.  The second option is obviously the more preferable and has the additional benefit of being good for our health, but is probably a bit unrealistic.  Fuel was also been a little higher this month as we took a trip to Devon to see family, but only by about £30 so it's not really anything to worry about.

On another positive, I did manage to put more money into my pension again this month (always good), and we managed to do well with our personal spending again.  There were two spends we haven't been able to prepare for.  One was me needing to get some antivirus software for my new laptop and the other was Ed needing to buy some more shoes as his others gave up the ghost.  I have noticed that I've become more mindful again when it comes to buying things and I've even written a list of the things I know I want to get in the future with how much I think the items will be.  I'll be spacing out buying these over the next few months and depending on what I've already spent that month.  We have done a bit of spending on the holiday we'll be taking in October, mostly on accommodation, but we like to get these things all booked in advanced so we don't need to worry about it when the time comes and it spreads the cost.  

We have also managed to put some more money into our savings account.  It's not as much as I was hoping, but still a good amount and, seeing as our spending hasn't been too bad this month, I'm not sure we could have actually been able to put anymore in.  We've already passed our goal this year of saving a third of the total amount any way, so anything extra that goes in is a bonus that goes a long way to helping us reach our overall goal sooner.

So it hasn't been too bad a month really.  We succeeded in most of the things we had planned to do we just need to work on our food spending a little bit more.  I am wondering if we need to go back to cash spending on the groceries again to help us curb this as that definitely worked well the last time we tried it.  If we do that over September it will hopefully reset us back into spending less and help get this little section back under budget, which means more into savings.  As when we get paid has now changed I'm thinking about changing how our weeks run so that instead of running Saturday to Friday we are now going to the usual Monday to Sunday, which for some reason feels a lot easier to work with - though I don't really know why.  This does mean that the first week in September will be nine days long instead of seven.  It also means that I'll be doing the budgets on a Sunday now instead of a Friday, which makes my end of the work week a little more relaxing.