After all my preparations (which by a normal cyclist's standards wouldn't really count as 'training'), my 62 mile bike race was thwarted by tonsillitis. Most vexing, not least because I had my tonsils removed when I was seven, and they appear to have grown back for the sole purpose of causing trouble. Is it just me who thinks that's a bit weird? Well, apparently it can happen, and according to this source (reliability unknown) it can happen, sometimes in people who eat too much cake. Hmm. 

Anyway, I was far too poorly to do the race, or even go and watch my sister and her friends, who had a grand old time without me. I was most disappointed (really!)

Still, it hasn't stopped me cycling now I'm feeling better. On Sunday morning it was so gloriously warm and the sun was streaming in through the windows and I just couldn't stand the thought of staying inside for the whole day. One of the things I love about cycling regularly is that the bike is always ready and waiting by the back door, and I don't need to do half an hour of maintenance and faffing before I go out. So off I went, up into the woods again. 

This is my extended cycling to work route, just under ten miles, and takes me just under an hour. It's not exactly flat, although most of the uphill bit is in the woods, so the scenery is nicely distracting. 

Nothing out of the ordinary happened on Sunday - I went out, cycled through the woods, and was home in time for second breakfast. It feels good to be fit enough to just decide to cycle ten miles on the spur of the moment for no reason other than 'it's sunny'. 

And being fit enough to do that means that I'm not daunted by the prospect of cycling ten miles between work venues in a day, as I did today - which saved me a whole lot of time waiting for a bus. 

I'm off work in a couple of weeks, and it looks like my time off will be split by a holiday together, and a few days on my own. I'm thinking me and my bicycle might take off for a country road somewhere, possibly Scotland. I've not done that for a good few years, but I think now might be the time... 

We're getting to the stage where we could, if necessary, put things in cupboards and throw our house to the mercy of the market in its current state (although we'd rather finish off a few little bits first). It feels nearly there.

We've started to look at new houses again. We never stopped looking on the internet, of course, but after a brief flurry a couple of years ago we hadn't visited any, as we knew we just weren't ready to sell. Now it feels like we could if we found the right house, so our weekends are a mix of DIY and pottering around other people's houses. 

We've seen three in the last few weeks - all lovely on paper, but not-quite-right in reality. The first was near here, and had lots of rooms, but they were all smaller than the rooms we have here, and some were very dark. It's the perfect house for someone though and is already sold. 

The second we adored. Old and higgledy piggledy and cottagey, with lawns and vegetable beds and outbuildings, and not too far away from work. But again, the rooms were small, and an odd layout, and even I had to duck to go through some of the doorways. We would have made it work - but not for the price the current owners wanted. We've left that information with them and I don't expect to hear back. 

Yesterday's house was pretty. We had an inkling it would be too small, and it was, although downstairs was more spacious than we thought. The garden though was lovely - but overlooked by the houses over the road, which hadn't been clear on the pictures. Having lived here, where the street runs right past the garden, I'm fed up of being watched while I potter. 

But it's making me ponder on the intangible something we want from a new house, which is so hard to define. We tell estate agents we want somewhere detached, with a decent, non-overlooked garden with room for chickens, and a spare downstairs room to use for music - and those are our main requirements. There are plenty of houses that have those things, but they're just not right, for reasons we're finding hard to explain even to ourselves. 

Maybe we don't have to explain. Maybe we'll know it when we feel it. Or maybe not - maybe there are many potential future homes that we would be very happy in, and the trick is just finding one we can afford that's close enough to work. We don't have an endless budget, after all, so we're unlikely to get everything we'd like in one house. 

One thing we've decided that we do want, and that is quite hard to explain to estate agents, is hanging out space. We want to be able to have people sitting round the kitchen table, and still have room to make tea. We want to lounge in the living room and not feel like the walls are closing in. I'm thinking we may need something slightly larger than a teensy cottage (however cute). 

So the search continues, and we try to turn each trip into a mini adventure, exploring new places (or revisiting old ones). Yesterday we were particularly fortunate as the sun shone, and we ate a chip butty sitting on the steps in a little market town I've not been to for fifteen years. 

The scenery on the journey was glorious, but even thirty miles was just too far for a daily commute on those roads. It took forever to get home (I admit it would have been slightly quicker if I hadn't kept stopping to take photographs).

So we're back to the (online) drawing board. In the meantime, today we are most excited to be putting down the landing carpet after treading only on floorboards for over a year. But first it's such a sunshiney day that I'm going to sneak off on my bike for an hour. 

I can't believe I haven't done a garden update since December, but I suppose it's not surprising really as I've barely been out there. Partly, it's been cold and rainy and dark, and not much has been growing, and we've been focusing on the inside of the house. 

This weekend though, the sun came out, and we finally cleared a path to the front door and opened it for the first time this year (I mean, we have been out of the house in that time, we just use the back door as our main means of escape).  

The garden hasn't been quite as neglected as you might think - because it runs alongside the pavement I do pull out the odd weed or bit of litter as I'm passing to get into the car. But that's not the same as being in the garden I don't think. 

Yet again, I was impressed by these winter pansies, which have lasted since August, which is seven months now. That's pretty impressive, and they've just got more and more abundant throughout the winter. 

The ornamental cabbage have gone to seed, but I've left them for now as I think they look quite sculptural (and also I have nothing to replace them with).

Signs of spring are peeking through though. That's my only daffodil that you can see above. My mum helped me plant what felt like a thousand crocus bulbs last winter, but so far only these at the bottom of the apple tree have emerged. 

I love their delicate purple stripiness and their thin stripey leaves. 

The tulips are making progress, although no flowers yet. And other signs of spring have started to surprise me, like this hyacinth that I'd clearly shoved into a pot outside the back door after it had flowered inside last year (or even the year before). 

Some things are looking a little worse for wear. These pansies have clearly been munched - I suspect by a slug slithering past on its way to the nearby compost bin. I need to put them back outside the back door actually - they were moved when I neighbour had scaffolding round their house before Christmas and are now tucked away in the shade of the lilac, which isn't an ideal place for them. 

Every year I think I've killed the rhubarb (and the fuchsia, but I've no evidence for the contrary on that yet this year so we'll have to wait and see). However, it seems I'm wrong - rhubarb is wending its wrinkly way up through the lavender.  

Speaking of lavender... I never did get round to harvesting it at the end of last year, and it was looking rather woody and gangly. It started drizzling while I was out in the garden, but I did manage to pull the woodiest stems off this and it now looks considerably more tidy. 

So there we are - a little peek round my garden on this, the spring equinox, when the day and night are equal length and we start, slowly, to inch our way towards summer. 

How's your garden looking? 

It's been a while since I did anything with fabric or wool, and I've missed it. My stash was mostly packed away last year (or maybe even the year before) and sits forlornly in sealed boxes in the cellar, while I wield paint brushes and plastering tools. 

So I was almost pleased last week when my hand knitted socks developed holes, as it was a nice excuse to sew them up. 

I finished these back in September, so they've only been going for six months, but I do wear them a lot, usually as a second pair over the top of a smaller pair in walking boots. I wear waling boots most days, and I walk a lot, so they've had a good run. But given how long it took me to make them, I wasn't about to throw them away. Instead, a bit of slightly shoddy non-expert darning was called for. 

I did say it was shoddy... I never learned to darn properly. I understand that you almost have to weave new fabric across the hole, and that's what I've tried to do, but I suspect a real darning expert would laugh at my attempt. 

Not exactly an invisible mend, but the heels of my socks are rarely that visible anyway. And I didn't have many colours to choose from, with my stash being packed away. So it'll do, and hopefully my socks will live to see another day. 

In case they don't though, I've started a new pair. 

I love knitting socks. They don't take up much room, or require much equipment, and you can move them from room to room when they're getting in the way. 

I'm using a new (to me) pattern this time as neither of the two I've tried before have been wholly satisfactory. This time I'm following Winwick Mum's Sockalong pattern - I'm far too late to join in with everyone else but the pattern is well written and easy, and if you're a knitter who fancies a go at socks I'd highly recommend it. 

I'm using Fair Isle effect wool this time, although I confess I'm not seeing much other than vague stripey-ness at the minute (nothing wrong with stripes of course, but I was expecting a bit more fancy). Maybe the fancier stuff will appear soon... 

While I was in a making mood, I came across these dust sheets in the living room. 

I'm not even going to show you a picture of the living room - it's so ludicrously Full Of Things at the minute you wouldn't believe your eyes. But this pile was taking up quite a bit of space, and I decided it was time to get rid of some of them. We've used dust sheets a lot - real, old sheets, not specifically bought for this - but many of them were so covered with plaster and dried on paint that they whenever we used them, they were actually making things more dusty. 

We're also nearing the end of the big jobs that we need dust sheets for, so I kept the two that were in the best shape, and some of the rest I cut up for rags. We use a lot of rags at the minute too - for wiping up paint spills, cleaning brushes, dusting after sanding and all manner of other grubby tasks. Half an hour with a pair of scissors while talking to some friends and I had a nice useful basket which should see us through a few weeks at least. 

I know cutting dust sheets into rags isn't exactly creative, but it felt good to be playing around with fabric again. I've started to think about where in the house might need a bit of soft furnishing, and have made plans for a cushion cover or two and a couple of minor alterations to things. 

I can't imagine how exciting it's going to be to dig my stash out of the cellar when we finally move. I might make a 'new house' quilt in celebration. 

Let's start with some home made scones, shall we? Because DIY is always more fun when you have a snack, especially a home made one. 

The last week or two of DIY for me has focused on the spare room. This is the smallest bedroom, next to the bathroom, which we've always used as a workshop and general dumping ground. Over the last few months (years) we've slowly been patching up the plaster on the walls, installing window frames and skirting boards (you'd think a room would have had these already, but clearly not) and fixing the floor. 

I spent a couple of nights last week up the ladder painting the ancient polystyrene ceiling tiles. We daren't take them down for fear of what we might find underneath, but they were grubby and speckled with unidentifiable black grime so I slapped on a coat of white paint and we're hoping they're unnoticeable. 

​The next thing to tackle was the floor. 

We've never done anything with this, but before we moved here various bits of it were painted different colours so was a bit of a hotchpotch. We had a large rug we planned to use in here, so we didn't do any fancy sanding or anything, just mended a couple of boards where they'd suffered mishaps over the years, and gave the whole thing a couple of coats of dark brown fence paint, which was extremely satisfying. 

Makes quite a difference, doesn't it? If you look closely you can still see lumps of glue and goodness knows what under the paint, but, well, if you come into this house and start looking under the rugs for blemishes then you might find yourself swiftly escorted out of the door...

After all that painting, we hopped to the city farm for a snack, and it was warm enough to sit outside there for the first time this year. 

We've been keeping an eye out on Freegle for a bed for the spare room, but last weekend a friend mentioned that her parents were taking one to the charity shop and would we like it instead? Yes please - we don't need it in the long term so we'll pass it on to the charity shop when we're done. Today I laid out the rug, put the bed together, and the whole thing is starting to look like a room in a normal house. 

Gosh. We've still got a few bits and pieces of furniture to go in here (chair, desk, standard lamp) that are dotted about the house, and I need to figure out what I've done with the single duvet, but this really does feel like progress. Right now it's the tidiest room in the house, and I can see it becoming a temporary reading room and sanctuary from the chaos in the coming weeks. 

​Getting there... 

Yesterday I hopped on a train and spent the day in York with some lovely folk I used to work with. 

It was a grey day, and you can't tell from my pictures that I was even in York, as they were pretty much all taken inside cafes. 

We had a tiny jigsaw race in an old pub, and I was delighted by these tiny postcard-sized wooden puzzles with their 'whimsy pieces'. Most fetching (and much harder than you'd think). 

We did, of course, venture outside for a while (between cafes), and found ourselves walking up on the city walls. 

I love it up there, but on a Saturday afternoon it's a bit like standing in a queue, everyone shuffling forwards in lines, and with the grey skies it just wasn't very inspiring. We persisted for a while though, and it was good to look out over the city. But eventually we caved in and headed back to another cafe. 

I love days like this, and I don't get them very often. No purpose other than to catch up with friends. No deadline, no particular plans (but not so many people that you end up traipsing trying to find somewhere with a big enough table). Definitely something I should do more of. 

I've only done this cycling-in-the-woods-before-work thing twice now but it's already starting to feel like a habit.

The first three miles are on the road - a main road, but most of the traffic is heading into town so I sail past the queues in the opposite direction. After a mile or so downhill it flattens out, and then slowly starts to creep upwards. I admit this bit is quite tedious, but in just twenty minutes I'm faced with this. 

This reservoir marks the start of the path into the woods. On Monday I saw a deer here, peeking through the trees. 

​It also marks the start of the mud. 

This was the worst of it actually, and even this wasn't too bad. I don't have a mountain bike, and just have to hold my nerve and hope I don't fall off (while realising that if I do, nothing really bad is going to happen as I'm heading uphill so there's no chance of a high speed topple). There was no wind on Monday morning, and the trees were reflected in the puddles. 

The path diverges here. To the left, through a gate, is a rocky stream, which wends its way upwards by a steep path, impossible to cycle up even on a mountain bike (for me, at least). To the right is the old carriage track, which takes a slightly longer, less steep route to the top.

The path is rocky here and not so muddy, which makes it easier to ride on, although it can be a bit tricky navigating round the stones. It feels like a good core workout though. 

The path winds through the woods, turning left at the end there and going up the slope to the side. 

It feels more dramatic up here, and you get a good view as the bank drops away to the left to join the rocky stream below.

Near the top, rocky outcrops line the path. 

These woods are a local nature reserve, and are part of a Site of Special Scientific Interest, and I feel privileged to be able to wander through them at will on my way (kind of) to work. I really must get up there and walk along the path by the brook again soon. 

After two or three miles through the woods I reached the road again. A quiet road for the first mile or two, and mostly downhill, so I stood up on my pedals and sailed along singing to myself as I headed towards the city. Not a bad start to the day at all. 

I've taken to making these delicious chocolate brownies in fairy cake cases. Ostensibly I make them for work - I freeze them and take two with me each day - but this weekend I couldn't pretend they were for work, as I made them on Saturday afternoon and all 24 of them were gone by Sunday evening. 

In our defence (kind of) it's important to have something to keep you going while you're doing DIY (although the fact that I've adopted this attitude for a good couple of years now may have something to do with why many of my clothes don't fit...). This was my view for much of the rest of the weekend. 

Yes, I'm mixing sand with paint in a margerine tub - an activity that should be outlawed after you leave school (although it was kind of fun). It's not one of my 'hot decorating tips' (in fact I'm not sure I have any of those) - it's an attempt to match the rest of the oddly-surfaced wall in the spare room after we mended a large hole. 

I admit it was quite fun to paint, and it looks pretty unobtrusive now it's the same colour as the rest of the wall. Phew. 

Slightly less fun was this polystyrene ceiling. 

I believe these have been banned now (something to do with not meeting fire regulations) but this one's been here for 30 years and I'm not taking it down now. It was, however, disgustingly grubby, and I spent much of Sunday covering the grubbiness with white emulsion. A satisfying job, if a bit tough on the neck. 

You might not believe it (I'm not sure I believe it) but the spare room is actually starting to feel somewhat like a bedroom now, rather than the workshop it's been for the last 27 years. The ceiling is (nearly) painted, the walls are painted, we've acquired a single bed and some other furniture. Just need to get rid of this mess (to where?) and get the floor painted. A job for next weekend I think... 

Are you sick of my cycling posts yet? Because I'm nowhere near the end of my enthusiasm so you might have to bear with them for a little while longer I'm afraid. 

This weekend's inspired plan was to drive out to somewhere flat, and get in my last (er, and first) long ride before the 62 mile race, which is now in less than three weeks. The day didn't start well when I got lost on the way to the car park, and it took me nearly two hours to drive 45 miles. I paid for four hours of parking, and set off along the trail, only to be faced with a hill - small, but definitely not flat by my reckoning. 

Fortunately this was the only major incline, and cyclists were advised to dismount (which I did, of course). 

This was an out and back route for me, and I'd one my homework and started at the bottom of the very gentle (but very long) climb, thinking I'd put in the effort on the way out, and coast all the way home. 

Fat chance. 'Flat' takes on a different meaning when you're on a bike, and when wind is involved, flat almost becomes irrelevant. I stopped after about six miles to take stock. 

It had taken me a good 45 minutes to get to this point, and I confess I was tempted to turn round. But this was meant to be a long ride, which meant it had to be a decent proportion of the 62 miles of the race. Thirteen miles just wasn't going to cut it. 

Where to turn round though? After twelve miles there was a signpost advising of a cafe two miles ahead. If I stopped there, that would mean a 28 mile round trip. When I got to the cafe though, there was a picnic spot signed another mile ahead - which would mean a 30 mile round trip. But 30 miles was tantilisingly close to half way through the race, and I decided that psychologically it would feel good to have broken the half way barrier....

At sixteen miles I stopped. Just stopped, in the middle of the path, to the slight bemusement of a family who I'd just overtaken (and would have to overtake again a few moments later). I had a fleeting thought of 'I'll just get to that bridge...' but no, some sense took hold and I turned round to head back to the car, by now wise to the fact that my nice downhill coast home wasn't going to be any such thing. 

You see, it was windy. I laughed when I stopped, as the wind was almost imperceptible when I was still, but on the bike I was having to lean sideways to avoid being blown off. Some of the trail is within deep cuttings which are a bit more sheltered, but the open sections are very exposed, and, as I discovered (contrary to the laws of physics) the wind was blowing in both directions.

By this point I was that odd combination of grouchy and enjoying myself that I often get on a long bike ride or run, and amused myself by making a short video, which I'm not even going to show you because it's so dull, and illustrates nothing except how slowly I was going. 

After 19 miles I arrived back at the cafe, and managed to get my fingers working enough to buy a Double Decker and drink some more of my (tepid) flask of tea. My grouchiness increased when I came across this sign - my car was in Ashbourne... 

​Still, if you've done 19 miles you can do another 13, right? Right. I admit the trail was getting rather repetitive by this point, and as it was getting close to lunchtime I was having to slow down to navigate around an increasing number of amblers, children and excitable dogs. 

And, as I mentioned, I seemed to be going uphill again. 

However, there is a perverse pleasure in discomfort brought on by exercise. Yes, I was getting tired, but look! I'd cycled 20 miles, 21, 22, and I was still going! Think of where I'd have got to if I'd set out from home and gone in a straight line! (Doncaster, probably, which is why I didn't). I started doing odd mental arithmetic, trying to work out how long the race would take me if I kept up my current speed ('all day' was the answer). 

Eventually I did feel a slight downward slant in the trail, although I never got to the stage of freewheeling once in 32 miles, as the surface was too rough and the wind too strong. I passed my initial picnic spot (only six miles to go) then eventually reached the 'steep slope - cyclists dismount' sign again. 

Yay - snacks, just 200 yards ahead! An excellent sign (although I wasn't in the market for an ice cream). My legs weren't too impressed at having to push up the other side of that hill mind you. But I was extremely glad of that kiosk, and inhaled yet another chocolate bar before performing a comedy manoeuvre trying to lift my utterly filthy (and slippery) bike into a car with a broken hydraulic arm which means I have to hold the back door open with my head.

Oddly enough nobody offered to help, and I'm far too stubborn to ask. 

With six minutes left of my four hour parking ticket, I finally made it out of the car park. Thirty two miles, bike caked in grime, and one pair of worryingly muddy hand-knitted socks (whose idea was it to wear those??)

Two days later I'm not feeling it at all, which I'm taking as a good sign. I cycled to work today and neither my backside nor my knees objected once. Maybe all this cycling is actually making me a little fitter? 

Talk to me about that again in three weeks...