Skip to main content

Visiting Virginia

Funnily enough, it was the trees that we really noticed this time.  Spreading oaks three times higher than the houses huddling beneath them.  Fat roots wriggling beneath the brick pavements.  And on the highways, you barely got out of town before the road became a channel between two walls of green leaves.  In Texas they have fast food joints and billboards along the interstates.  In Virginia, they have trees.

Richmond is a nicely-situated city; if you go south-east you get to the Atlantic Ocean, if you head north-west you reach the Blue Ridge Mountains.  We did both.

Family photo on Sandbridge beach
Graham and Toby at the Shenandoah Pass lookout point

John and Kristal took a day off work so they could accompany us to Sandbridge, where we set up camp underneath a big green umbrella and tried to stop Toby from eating sand.  He was quite a fan of the beach (great texture!) but the sea was far too cold and unpredictable.  One minute it's round your toes and the next it's hitting you in the chest!  Water isn't supposed to behave like that!  It's meant to stay nice and still and let you smack it.

I'm really not sure about this, Mum...

For the rest of us, the sea was a welcome chance to cool off.  It was fun to splash in some waves again.  By mid-afternoon the beach had become almost too hot to walk on, and we gathered up our sand-encrusted persons and possessions and headed for home.

This beach thing is hard work!

The next day we ventured out in the opposite direction, out to the beautiful countryside of Highland County.  My Uncle Peter and Aunt Mary have been renovating an old house up there for a while now.  It's still a work in progress but quite habitable and full of character (I loved the checker-painted kitchen floor), so we interrupted Mary's redecoration for a couple of days and took her for walks in the woods instead.  We enjoyed visiting with some of her family while we were there too.  There are definitely a few "removeds" in the technical description of my relationship to them, but you'd never know it from their welcome.  Toby and the dog collaborated in trying to do me out of my dinner - while Toby caused a distraction by trying to eat grass, the dog nipped in and swiped a tomato off my plate.  I didn't know which to grab first!

Peter and Mary's house

Driving a tractor!

If there is a perfect way to spend an evening it is this: Sitting around a bonfire in the peace of the silent hills, watching the blue of the sky deepen and the stars pop out one by one, until the horizon is dark and the misty brightness of the Milky Way arches overhead.  Some casual conversation and a few sticky s'mores, and the fleeting glimpse of a shooting star.  We stumbled back to the house in a blissed-out haze...

By the bonfire

...and spent the next hour trying to persuade a screaming baby to go back to sleep.  He was teething, I think.

This is kind of chilly, too...

Back Creek, Highland County VA

Back in Richmond, Toby had his first boat ride, a rather tame jaunt around a portion of the Kanawha Canal in the centre of the city.

On the boat

Kanawha Canal (with train)
 John and Kristal kindly babysat one evening so that Graham and I could enjoy a nice dinner and drink together.  Several weeks later, they are still wondering if they really want kids.



Date night at the Capital Ale House!

And we were treated to a double fireworks display for the Fourth of July - the city fireworks over the James River, and then, as we turned around, a thunderstorm coming in from the north.

 
All too soon, it was time to pack our bags again.  No, Toby, you don't need to go in there!

But I fit so well!
Labels:

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Trent Valley: the march of the pylons

In the 1980s, the River Trent supplied the cooling water for fifteen coal-fired power stations, each one gobbling up coal from the local mines and quenching its heat with gallons of river water. The area was known as Megawatt Valley . As the 20th century gave way to the 21st, the mines closed, the coal trains stopped running, and the iconic cooling towers, one by one, fell to the ground. The high-voltage electricity lines which connected the stations to the grid are still there, however, and they dominated the walk I did today. The stately silhouettes of pylons stalked across the landscape, carrying fizzing power lines which sliced up the sky. At one point, I was within view of two of the remaining sets of cooling towers. Diving further back into history, I parked by Swarkestone Lock on the Trent & Mersey Canal, walked past St James' Church, and arrived at Swarkestone Bridge, a 14th-century causeway which still, remarkably, carries traffic today. It was famously the southernmos...
Post a Comment
Read more

The Churnet Way: a wonderful walk

The loop from Oakamoor to Froghall and back was one of the most enjoyable walks I've done in a long time. It had a bit of everything: woods, ponds, rivers and railways; steep climbs and sweeping views; an unusual church, an ex-industrial wharf, and, as a final bonus, car parks with toilets. Of course, the sunny weather helped too. I parked in Oakamoor and set off along a quiet lane called Stoney Dale. This is the route of the Churnet Way, which deviates away from the river for a couple of miles. After a while I turned right and climbed up through the woods on a gravelly path, then dropped down to the B5417. a spring in Oakamoor   Crossing the road, I entered Hawksmoor Nature Reserve. It has some fine gateposts commemorating John Richard Beech Masefield, "a great naturalist". I found a photo of the opening of the gateway in 1933; unsurprisingly, the trees have grown a lot since then! A track took me down through the woods to East Wall Farm. Lovely view! Nice duck pond as ...
Post a Comment
Read more

Theo Alexander

The due date was fast approaching, and, having had Toby five weeks early, this pregnancy was feeling like it had dragged on far too long.  On Sunday morning, two days before D-Day, we went to church, wearily confirming to eager enquiries that yes, we were still here, no baby in tow yet.  And then, at 3:30 am on the morning of Monday 10th February, my waters broke and things began to get moving.  Fast. Yes, I know I had to apologise to you ladies who have gone through long-drawn-out labours last time , and I'm afraid I have to do it again.  The change in the midwife's attitude when we got to the hospital was almost comical; she breezed in and put the monitors on and said, "I'll just leave those for a few minutes, then".  Back she came for a proper examination, had a quick feel, and: "OK, we'll get you to the delivery room RIGHT NOW," followed by a mad dash down the corridor in a wheelchair!  Our new little boy was born at 5:16 am. You...
1 comment
Read more