Plan B

Broadband returned last night after a 9 hour outage! Today dawned clear and bright. The world is so much more manageable when the technology is working … or am I simply a hopeless addict?

Plan A was to drive up the hill for a sunny walk across Cleeve Common. Unsurprisingly everyone had the same idea and there was simply nowhere to park. Some had even tried to park on soft verges and were up to their axles in mud and related parking rage. We manage to extricate ourselves without getting stuck and headed down the hill into Cheltenham’s Pittville Park. It was also busy but manageable and we enjoyed our walk among the capital trees and the ornamental lakes lapping below the Pump Room. Today was a day when the health benefits of Cheltenham were not the sole domain of its eponymous Spa waters.

In my Blip you can see Cleeve Common in the background. It is this escarpment that wraps around Cheltenham’s race course to enable many to describe it as an amphitheatre of national hunt racing. I noticed that work has already begun to build the tented “town” that adjoins the grandstands ahead of the Gold Cup Festival in mid March.