An Active Christmas

We arrived at the Waterhead Hotel near Ambleside in the Lake District at around 20:30 last Saturday, having driven through the densest fog we'd ever seen to get there. At one point we got to a roundabout, where there are no cats eyes in the road. Well, given that the cats eyes were the only things helping us drive in a straight line, we careered all over the roundabout until we found our exit and the cats eyes started again. On Sunday morning we went down to the restaurant and had a massive breakfast, which put paid to our plans to go running straight afterwards, but we waited an hour or so then went out. It wasn't entirely successful because the paths were really icy, but we managed to do about 4km before giving up.

On Christmas Eve we decided to go to the gym at the Low Wood, the Waterhead's sister hotel a mile down the road. We did an hour on the cross trainer and lots of stretches afterwards. We gave ourselves the day off on Christmas Day (although we did go on the Christmas morning walk with other hotel guests) and on Boxing Day we climbed Loughrigg Fell on roughly this route - we went off the track a couple of times and aren't sure exactly which way we ended up going.

Thursday we went back to the gym - I exercised while he had a massage, then he exercised while I had a facial. Very nice! But that was the end of our Christmas exercise... We drove to my parents' house on Friday morning and I mapped out a 5km route from their house that we could run each day, as there's no gym close by, but we got up yesterday and decided not to bother ;). We'll start again the day after New Year's Day.

We had a great Christmas. Rob had loads of presents to open, which he loved, and while I didn't have much to open on Christmas Day because my present this year was the piano, he did buy me a Garmin Forerunner 305 so I can track my runs better - not an inexpensive present either, and I wasn't expecting it after the piano, so that was a real surprise.

We're having a really good time here with my parents and Jen - just eating and chatting, really :). We're leaving here tomorrow morning, going back to Rob's parents' for lunch (good job because we left Grandma's present to us there last week) then driving back down to Southampton in time to go round to Adrian and Sara's for a New Year's Eve meal.