After the rush of yesterday I had a calmer day today as I had made a date some time ago to meet up with my friend - another Sarah who I have known since we first met in 1986 at Berkshire College of Art and Design. Before I left I had a few work emails to write so I left a little later than I had intended and my timings were further compounded by an ‘interesting route’ generated by the SatNav which took through some incredibly narrow country lanes (I don’t remember these fro when I was a child in this area) and finally I had to pass through an incredibly narrow traffic calming scheme over the Kennet and Avon canal - don’t remember that either!
I finally arrived at Sarah’s house which I have not visited before and was greeted by a total of five different dogs and only one of them is Sarahs! it was lovely to catch up - despite only having picked up our friendship a couple of years ago and only meeting once or twice a year, we can simply pick up where we left off.
We went out on two dog walks as Sarah one walks two dogs at a time and we drove to nearby Engelfield woods which were beautiful with a large lake in the middle. In between the walks we had lunch back at Sarahs. I also got to meet her new partner Jay who seems very nice.
Unfortunately I had to leave in the later afternoon to avoid the rush hour but we are planning to meet up again in August. Thank good ness the SatNav took a different route back - this time I went very close to where I used to live in Tilehurst. Had it not been so late I would have taken a little drive back to see where I grew up. The SatNav let itself down again later when I ended up on the M25 near Heathrow which is really not my favourite stretch of road!
