A big long walk

Yesterday Ann's fitness club re-opened so she had a very pleasant swim and for most of the time there were only another two people in the pool with her. It obviously must have got busier later because this morning, after my walk, she was browsing on FB when she saw the club had put up a post saying that because they could only allow ten people in the pool at any one time, one now has to book. Ann totally understands that, but one of the good things about her club was the fact that one could go for a swim at pretty much whatever time one wanted. Pre-Covid if Ann went for a swim during the day, she often had the whole pool to herself. Also none of the fitness classes have re-started yet and as Ann doesn't often use the gym, it seemed a bit silly to be paying for something she wasn't going to be using so she has frozen her membership for a couple of months in the hope that by November things might be a bit more 'back to normal'.

Anyway the reason we are telling you this is because this morning Ann had intended going for another swim and I was going to have 'home alone' snooze time. Obviously that didn't happen so Ann went into bored mode. However it was quite a nice day for walking so Ann said, 'Trixie, shall we go for a big long walk? Let's just go out the front door and see where we end up.'

..........................11 miles later we ended up in Musselburgh!!

At the start of the walk I was off my lead for lots of run about time and guess what I saw when I was walking along this path?............................. A fox! It was almost the spitting image of me. It had the nerve to walk right across this path in front of me and disappear into the bushes. Obviously I had to follow it because I thought it might want to play with me. Unfortunately it was super speedy and I couldn't find it. Booooohooooo. Normally I see lots of squirrels in these woods but today I didn't see one single squirrel. Booooohooooo. But guess who I did meet? I met 'Bertie the Beardie'. Yay! I haven't seen Bertie for ages so our owners are going to try and arrange a playdate for us at the end of the week. That will be fun.

Even though we didn't actually have a plan of where we were going, after we'd walked for about an hour Ann decided that we might as well walk to Musselburgh via Danderhall, Millerhill, Old Craighall and Monktonhall. She didn't have a clue how far that was or how long it would take us but we had all day and the good thing about walking in Edinburgh is.................... the bus service is amazing so she knew if we got tired we could just jump on a bus and go home.

By this time I was back on my lead but when we got to 'Drum Woods' at the end of Ferniehill Drive we noticed a path heading towards Danderhall. Ann said, 'Trixie, I bet this path will cut off the corner. We'll see where it goes and you can have some more off lead time.' Mmmmm............ famous last words. The further along the path we went, the more overgrown it became and although it would have 'cut off the corner' if we could actually have got to the main road, we couldn't because there was a big fence (with barbed wire on the top) preventing us from getting to where we wanted to be. So we ended up pretty much walking around in a circle and Ann's legs are now full of nettle stings and scratches, even though she was wearing trousers.

Oh and by the way, yes Ann does have the Google maps app on her phone but sometimes she just likes the surprise element of a walk. Lol!!!

The rest of the walk I was on my lead and when we got to the bus stop at Musselburgh Ann looked at her 'Strava' app to see how far we'd walked. She never looks at the app when we're walking because she likes the distance we've trekked to be a surprise. Ie, she thought we'd probably walked about 8-9 miles so felt quite pleased when she saw we'd walked more than 11 miles.

I am such a good girl when I'm on the buses. I immediately just lie down and I don't get up until Ann tells me its time to get off. That's one of the reasons Ann love BLIP. She uses it as diary of our life. Ie when Ann first started taking me on buses I used to try and jump up at every single person who got on the bus. Now I know that, that isn't appropriate behaviour. I've learnt so much in the 18 months that I've lived with Ann.

Home and obviously I was pretty tired so I went into my bed for a snooze. (See extras). Ann's now put out my dinner for me but walking more than 11 miles has worn me out. I've been in the same position for three hours now?!!!!

…......................Wonder what I'll be doing tomorrow??!!!