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Photos from walks

Well, I admit I haven’t been so good at writing on my blog recently, but life has remained busy (sometimes manic) and I’ll try to share some of it here.

Last weekend I went walking. No, lets start a bit earlier than that, sometime in the week before last I heard of a walking group that met each Saturday morning at 9am and went for a walk, but I was having difficulties in finding out who was organising it, if I needed to sign up and such like. Anyway, a friend I met on that Friday told me she was going on the walk the next day and she would send me on the email and try to get me the contact details of the person in charge of the walk so I could sign up. That didn’t happen- due to meetings and technology failures (I think I might’ve mentioned them before), the email never got sent, so I went out on Friday evening and chilled and chatted with friends, getting in at the not too unearthly hour of 2am on Saturday morning. I was woken suddenly at 7:30am on Saturday morning by my friend ringing me to tell me that another friend of hers had dropped out and there was space to go on the walk if I wanted, so with my eyes just about open I gathered water, long trousers, boots and sunscreen and went off to pick her up (she very kindly made me lunch) and then managed to get to the meeting point just in time as they were organising who should go in which car.

Since it was our first time, we went on the short walk and it was very enjoyable (if getting quite warm by the middle/end of the walk). We walked near Charlotte Falls (not quite close enough to see the falls properly but we could see parts of the top of the falls, which looked nice) and then up through Regent village, past a lot of two storey houses (you don’t normally see very many of those and these ones looked pretty old, so conceivably built by freed slaves in the 19^th century). I didn’t manage to take a pic of the prettier ones, but I’ll try to put up some of the pics. I did go for a swim after the walk (and a shower 1^st), which was really relaxing and then tried to spend the afternoon reading development economics (normally interesting- at least to me), but my body decided that after a busy week, a lack of sleep and enough exercise for the day, that resting my eyes was going to turn into a 2 hour nap (well, I didn’t time it, but I certainly slept for longer than I planned).

(looking down the valley towards a 2 storey house). I think the long walk went up those hills in the background-rather them than me!

Saturday evening involved a hog roast- very tasty, I watched as it was turned over the outside fire for the last bits and it smelt good. We also had delicious garlic bread- could smell it ages before we saw or ate it, as well as fresh fish (which may also have been BBQed), oh and watching England do so badly in the rugby that someone said they were going to go and change their England shirt for a French one! I left early cos I had promised a very special friend that I would chat to them that evening, which was brilliant and much, much enjoyed.

On Sunday (yes- I know, this weekend seemed to have a lot happening, either that or I’ve suddenly become a lot more verbose than normal) I went to the early service, where I actually got to chat to the pastoral team (am sure they have a different name here), but that was nice, since I haven’t really ever had much of an opportunity to chat to them before because they’re always quite busy and the meetings are normally pretty big. Then went down to Kent (not the one near the M25) beach for the afternoon with a couple of people, one is a retired Lebanese friend who always has a lot of very interesting information to give about SL’s history and people and culture and the other, was a friend of mine who’s doing work with an NGO. We had crab and enjoyed the beach and swam in the sea- tho’ I did forget to take any photos, but golden sands and a turquoise ocean under a blue sky basically sums it up.

Ok, so last weekend dealt with, I’ll skip over most of the details of this week, since they mainly involved work, although I did manage to play squash (badly but enjoyably) with someone who’s definitely better than me, but we’re still able to have a good game and she doesn’t have it all her own way!

So the weekend just gone- I planned to go out on Friday evening because several people have just got back from trips abroad/home, however, my body decided that it preferred the idea of sleep, so that’s what happened. It did mean that I was much more fresh faced than I had been the week before and had a lot less difficulty in getting to the start of the walk on time. Now, the (apparently) highest mountain in (either the peninsula, or at least this end of the peninsula) is called Sugarloaf mountain (not sure if it abides by international standards in terms of being the right height for a mountain, but it felt a bit like one). The main walk this week was to go up and down Sugarloaf, now this week I’d actually got a proper rucksack-so I felt a little bit more the part than the shoulder bag I’d used last week, but although I made it to the top and didn’t lag behind or anything, my fitness leaves a whole lot to be desired. I think I probably manage to make it to the top on stubbornness alone because the body really wasn’t willing- and let me know by aching the whole of Sunday. The views were good (at least from 2/3’s of the way up) and from the top, you could see other mountains on the peninsula, which annoyingly looked taller than the one we were standing on, but we just said it was the perspective/angle (hmm-not sure about that). Anyway, was glad I did the walk- much enjoyed and managed not to fall asleep in the afternoon after all. Some of the rock faces were somewhat sheer-hopefully you can see this from the pictures I’ve taken, so in some ways going down was more difficult than going up (tho’ in my opinion, you’ve got gravity working with you rather than against you, so really, going down is much easier- you just need to work how when/how to stop!)

The view from 2/3's of the way up


The clamber to the 2/3's marker- the bit I still had to do but decided to photograph instead. I think it felt steeper than it looks, tho' that could just be my lack of fitness

The bit i'd just walked/clambered up.


the group at the top of sugarloaf mountain

On Sunday afternoon, after a very enjoyable lunch at Country Lodge (good views and you can get there by car instead of walking), I went down to Lumley beach, where I met a friend who’s here working for a couple of weeks and we joined in some volleyball- the first game was really good fun, but then people started getting really serious about it all, so we just chatted and enjoyed relaxing in the evening sun. The beach was sooooo busy- maybe I just don’t really go down to Lumley beach very often, but I didn’t realise how busy it got on Sunday afternoons- I guess we normally go to a beach that you need to drive to and since Lumley is part of Freetown, those without transport go there to enjoy the beach.

So anyway, you’ve heard a lot about the ‘new’ activity for me- going walking on Saturday mornings- long may it last and I hope it will help improve my fitness just a little bit more. Am still trying to swim a bit, tho’ that mainly ends up being at weekends as well and I don’t do enough exercise during the week- will see what I can organise.

Labels: BBQ, beach, photos, views, volley ball, walk

posted by Nenya @ 12:30 pm