Dear Diary: 1 June 2022 – 26th Anniversary!

Today is our 26th wedding anniversary and I was determined to make it a nice day. The last two days I have definitely overdone it however. Monday I ended up walking over 10000 steps and yesterday over 11000 after promising myself I would go a little more easy on Tuesday.

Today we went into Carlisle and walked around the (very small) castle. Slightly irritated at the place as while there were picnic tables in the large courtyard there were ZERO benches for sitting almost anywhere else. After climbing up the steep steps inside the keep, and down to the cellars, and up on the walls and around – zero places for those with any issues to take a rest after their climb. Unacceptable these days to be honest, and I have just posted a review on Google for this place giving it only 3 out of 5 for its lack of accessibility. If I can get to their contact us page (network is really bad here) I will post a comment directly to them too.

After looking round the castle we went on to look around the city and went into several charity shops. We stopped for a drink and snack – I had a cheese and ham toastie which was very nice and then we walked more around the city. Unfortunately I started to feel more and more unwell and to be honest – looked almost at envy at those persons using mobility scooters!

After around 4 hours we decided to go back to the car and consider what to have to eat – especially as it was our anniversary! We had seen a Chinese buffet the other side of the city but I was definitely not well enough to walk the mile or two back there! After some discussion we decided that we hadn’t found anything really nice apart from that places and we decided to drive down to Keswick again and find somewhere to eat there.

While we have been to Keswick a couple of times already and are likely to go back on Friday for a boat trip around Derwent Water, we didn’t find somewhere suitable there for a while either. We did try one pub – but the tables were very close together and I started feeling anxious just walking in – so we moved on. Eventually we found a Weatherspoons pub with an outside seating area and we had a meal there. It was basic (burger for me, chicken for my wife) but nice enough.

With all the walking around earlier and the walking to find something to eat and then back to the car again, today we ended up walking over 14200 steps! Hardly “taking it easy” like I planned. I felt pretty ill today too – so really MUST be more careful tomorrow. I really wanted to make sure my wife had a nice day and pushed myself but to be honest, I felt so ill I really didn’t have a great time myself.

I’ve already said we wont do much at all on Friday so I can feel ok to drive back for two and half hours on Saturday morning. We plan to go hire a boat near the carpark on Friday in Keswick so that should not be much walking around. Tomorrow (Thursday) we will have to go a bit easy too. Walking round towns and attractions really takes a lot of energy and I am actually dreading going back to work on Monday!

Chart below demonstrates that this is around the worst I’ve felt while still about. If I was at home today I think I would have stayed in bed all day like the other week.