Six hours at last!

The fates seem to be against my managing a six hour training walk, but I have managed it at last. The previous weekend I cut it short because of the rain, last Saturday my father was not well and I didn´t want to venture too far. Sunday he wasn´t really any better, but no worse either so I decided to risk it. Instead of going by train to the university, with an infrequent Sunday service, I decided to walk around the perimeter of the riding club which is only fifteen minutes from home. This meant going round twelve times! I stopped three times for a few minutes but the rest of the time I just trudged on. It was very boring and towards the end I was very tired, but I did manage the full six hours, twenty three km all told (accompanied by The Beast, of course). By the time I got home I couldn´t face the stairs so cheated by taking the lift. I´ll have to make up for that.

My father is still not well so I took him to the hospital today. He is in quite a bit of pain but the doctor said it is muscular and just prescribed painkillers. I felt as if we were being brushed off, but I suppose I´ll just have to wait and see if it gets better. Part of the problem is he is ninety now and any health issue is a worry. A couple of weekends ago we had a lovely joint birthday party for him and his youngest great grandchild who was one year old. The oldest and the youngest in the family.

Evenings are now taken up with Spanish lessons. I have found a BBC online course which looks pretty good. I am fluent in Portuguese and the languages are similar, but some of the vocabulary is very different - 'bocadillo' as opposed to 'sanduiche' and 'calle' as opposed to 'rua'. The written word is quite easy to follow as I can usually make an educated guess at the meaning of the words I don´t understand, but the spoken word is much harder. It feels as if I am trying to speak Portuguese with a lisp. Brazil is the only country in South America where Portuguese is spoken, all the rest speak Spanish. Just my luck!