Monday February 21, 2005

The car purchase

I said when I made my mind up on my car purchase that if all went well I would say from who purchased the car. Well as I have had the car for two weeks now and ( hastily touches wood) as is well I can now tell you how I chose where to buy it from.

I used Drive the deal You basically fill in the car you want, add the options and they tell you what the current price is. If you then want to go ahead you provide further details and the next thing is the dealer contacts you. My car came from Aberdeen in Scotland on the back of a lorry. Hopefully it did not fall off it. Drive the deal guarantee the car is brand new , not already licenced, direct from the factory and not an import. As I have said before they clearly use dealers who are struggling to sell their quota of cars.

Two walks around two villages

As I had been expecting to fly to Singapore on Saturday my wife had organised to meet a friend in London but as the trip was cancelled I was then left to amuse myself. The house could do with a clean so I started the day doing that. I wonder wether people still "spring clean" their houses as they did years ago. Probabley not.

Meanwhile after then I decided to do a walk around the southern side of our village that according to our walk book we last did in March 1997. The four mile walk takes you along a one mile stretch of the river Loddon which is where I joined the walk near where we live. The house which is by this point on the walk is called Whistley Bridge house. The Doomesday book recorded a mill at Whistley valued at five shillings and 250 eels ! On the opposite bank are gravel workings which are still in use. On leaving the river I passed by Dinton Pastures an old gravel workings which has been nicely turned into a golf course, sailing club and rambling area around the main lake. I then continued across a field to Hurst first passing its Church and then the pub where we had Sunday lunch the other week.

Passing through the rest of the village I then had my lunch at The Green Man where I had a respectable sausage baguette. I then went through a couple more fields returning back to the house.

On Sunday reunited we did a walk that started in Sonning. This was the home of Dick Turpin's aunt. The cottage has his name on it.

The walk took us out from the village across fields facing the ever increasingly stiff cold east wind. We then joined the Thames and walked back to the village. Before getting back to the start we passed by Sonning's famous eleven arches under its brick bridge. As the walk book says the designers could have never forseen the traffic volume that bridge has to endure being one of the rare routes across the river in these parts. By the bridge is the Sonning theatre where you can dine and then be entertained in the small theatre. I think they also have jazz nights.