Beth Chatto gardens

When we booked tickets to go to Beth Chatto, we were more concerned that we picked a day without rain.  We hadn't realised that we would actually choose the hottest day of the year so far, and that it would be the Friday before a predicted good weekend.  

The gardens themselves were lovely, and not crowded.  But very hot.  But we had a busy drive down, with a tedious slow moving queue for over a mile on the last stretch - presumably lots of people off to the seaside for the weekend.  And another queue on the way back around Ipswich.

We enjoyed our walk around the gardens, but in the end didn't stay long - it was just a bit too hot.  We then spent rather a lot of money in their plant sales.  We were grateful for the air-conditioning in the car on the way back.

For much of the early part of lockdown, I was really not bothered about going out.  I said to W in the car driving to Beth Chatto that I am not a hugely sociable person and could easily fall into a style of living where I go nowhere, and meet no-one.  But that I don't want to develop into that sort of totally reclusive person - I think that is part of what has been worrying me at the moment.  So it's good that we are starting to get out a bit more.

We're looking forward to a visit from ArcLight and Mr A next week - and hope that this is not frustrated by the worries of a "second spike" and the slowing of the lockdown relaxation.  

We have also started to seriously consider a car trip across to Sweden in September - I see that the border between Denmark and Sweden has now been opened (as from 1st August) - and our daughter reassures us that the levels of CV-19 in their bit of Sweden are vanishingly low.