Saturday February 18th 2023

Lois and I have been living in our new-build home in Malvern for nearly 3 months now, but we still haven't really explored the town centre, a situation which is total madness. Today our visitors - our daughter Alison and two of her 3 children Rosalind (14) and Isaac (12) put that situation to rights, and drive us into the town centre, which is on the side of a steep hill.

We start by looking in at the local Farmers' Market:

Then we look at Malvern's Priory church, which dates from 1085: yikes, it's over 1000 years old, which is what Lois and I sometimes feel like - oh dear!

Then we look round some of the shops in the town centre:

There are quite a few steep inclines to negotiate, so by this time, Lois and I in particular are in need of a sit-down - poor old souls that we are, so we drop into the Café Nero for coffees, hot chocolates and cakes: yum yum!

Then we do more browsing, and Ali finds a jigsaw for cat-lovers, which takes her fancy:

We look at the Abbey gate-house and I have a lesson from a wall-plaque about the age of the Malvern Hills : over 650 million years old is the answer. Yikes !!!!!

yikes! These steep inclines that Malvern has - scary!!!

it's all right to call your establishment "Hunky Dorey", and not "Hunky Dory", 

which would be the usual spelling, because it's the name of the shop, 

but "kitch" instead of "kitsch"  is a definite mis-spelling in my book!!!

Call me a silly old pedant if you like!!!!!

Lois with her church's former building in the background, no longer used

because the congregation has grown too large, which is nice!

the Abbey gatehouse

Finally we find a second-hand bookshop - oh joy!!!

15:00 In the afternoon we go for another walk round the half-finished 300-unit new-build housing estate where we live. This is quite a thing for me, to do two walks in one day - my limit is one or zero usually, so having Ali and the grandchildren to stay is definitely doing me good health-wise apart from everything else, which is nice!

Lois and I take Alison and the grandchildren for a walk 

around the half-finished 300-unit new-build housing estate where we now live

22:00 So there we are. Lois and I go to bed as two completely different people tonight - at last we feel knowledgeable about the town we live in, and we've also done 2 walks inside a single day, a feat which would make most people tremble in their boots, no doubt about that!

Zzzzzzzzzzz!!!!!