East is Eastnor

Our favourite walk during the both sunny and cold/miserable lockdowns was Ledbury to Eastnor Park and back. Eastnor is in the shadow of the Malvern Hills. It has deer, duck ponds, a castle and is probably one of the most picturesque places in this part of the country. On a nice day during covid, we'd walk there and expect there to be quite a few people about, but it was always much quieter than in normal times. We went there once and we were the only people in the whole park. Seemed a bit daft but it was fine by me. 

Government rules meant that we weren't allowed to have picnics. I was once sat in the middle of a field on the route to Eastnor eating a packet of Mini Cheddars when a bloke walked past on the nearby footpath and started shaking his head at me.

"You OK?", I said.

"You're not supposed to have picnics!", was the reply.

"Mate. I'm in the middle of an empty field. I'd be more danger to people if I coughed in my back garden" 

More head shaking with some tutting. 

A rule that was undoubtedly designed to stop London parks becoming packed with people on the piss left no leeway to common sense in my area which has a population density of 86 people per square kilometre. London has 5,600 people/km2. 

Of course, at one point we had various tiers where some areas had different rules to others, based on infection rates and hospital capacity. We were lucky enough to be Tier 1 over Christmas 2020 which meant we could go to the pub! It also meant that anyone in areas rife with infections would just get on a train and go to the pub in Herefordshire where we basically have one hospital. Wales was on a full lockdown at the time but Hereford suffered a Welsh invasion unlike anything seen in the city since the 8th century when King Nowy Hen of Brycheiniog had a bit of a beef with Æthelbald of Mercia. Unsurprisingly, infections soared and our Tier 1 status lasted barely a week, but I did get to have a pint up the pub on Christmas Day. 

I'd last walked to Eastnor from Ledbury in 1996 on our school sponsored walk. It was dumb that I hadn't bothered with it since then as it's a great walk to a lovely place that is only 2 miles away. Most of it is through beautiful woodland that starts as soon as you leave Ledbury. Towards the end you are treated with some panoramic views of the Malverns. We sat with the dogs looking at the views, had a drink of cider and appreciated how lucky we were to be in a place like this when millions of people in the cities had their expensive flats effectively turned into prison cells. 

The first time we did the walk though, it took a bit longer than expected to reach the viewpoint. Instead of checking a map I just basically took us on the path I thought I'd remembered from 1996. Of course I couldn't properly remember that walk though. We ended up on some Land Rover tracks and you then assume those tracks will lead to an exit from the woods, but they just seemed to go in a big circle. It was like someone had air lifted the Land Rovers in so they could just drive a loop and confuse me for a laugh. After I'd taken us down a dead ended path that lead to some thick bramble, we had a bit of a argument because we were pretty much lost. I had to resort to looking at where our blue dot was on Google Maps to find out way through. I wasn't the outdoors person I perhaps thought I was. 

When you get to Eastnor, if it's sunny and you are the only people there, it's amazing. I would pack 10 cans of cider in my backpack and we'd just doss by the duck ponds in the sun. Some would probably argue you were only supposed to have an hour of exercise (even though that was never a rule), but when no one else is around, it didn't logically matter if it was an hour or a year. At that time I didn't particularly want to catch covid and I certainly didn't want to be responsible for passing it on to someone else, but if you go somewhere with zero other people, there is zero risk. 

I'd worked from home since the lockdown started, which was a novelty to me. My wife was furloughed on full pay. I'd be sat working in the spare room while she did all the jobs I was supposed to do before the lockdown. It would get to 5pm, the weather was always good so we'd sit in the garden and have 2 or 3 cans. Repeat until the weekend when we'd go for nice walks and drink more cans. When the cider had run out I'd drive the 5 miles to Westons cider mill and buy 48 more cans. In normal times I'd only really have a few drinks at the weekend, but now the pubs were all closed it just seemed logical to get on the booze every evening and all day at the weekend. It was great. It wasn't particularly healthy but it was a good life. We weren't spending much money and my work-life balance was better than ever. I'd watch the daily briefings basically not wanting this way of life to end, and I'd feel guilty that when infection rates dropped, I was a bit sad because the lockdown might be over. What was an awful and heartbreaking time for so many people, was actually a superb time for me. At least it was in that first sunny lockdown anyway. An unfair situation that saw some businesses flourish and others go bankrupt. Some people lost everything they'd worked their whole life for, while others were getting paid to lie in the sun. White collar workers would have it good. Blue collar and public sector workers would have to do a full shift with colleagues but then couldn't go and see friends and family at the weekend. When it ended, we'd all have to pay for it though. 

My dad lives in Romania so covid put a block on being able to see him. Although we started having regular family Zoom calls so it actually felt like I'd seen him more. I'd play golf games on the laptop with my brother, cousin, uncle and friends on a weekend with a video call link on the go on another screen. We'd sit there just laughing and drinking like it would be if we were all up the pub playing pool. The only thing I really missed was going to watch Bristol Rovers and catching up with my friends there. When restrictions started to ease I got offered a gig as a ball boy at my favourite local non-league team Tuffley Rovers, because they knew I wanted to watch some football and being part of the staff was all that you could get away with. I also started going to some random non league games in open parks in the glorious Les James Cup because for a while, if a place had turnstiles, you couldn't go and watch the game. Proper desperation, but when there wasn't much you could do, it was something to do. 

I started looking at an OS Map of the local area and finding footpaths nearby that we hadn't been along before. There's a glorious but brutal walk up what I can only describe as a suitable cheese rolling hill which leads to a path through the woods called Top Walk and it has a sign. We must have had about 20 photos in front of that sign with our thumbs up. There was another footpath through some orchards that lead to a closed campsite with a lake and we'd sit by that and watch the weird apocalyptic world go by. Sometimes you'd see people you knew and it would be sort of awkward standing about 5 metres apart and talking about how you hadn't been able to do much but that it was still pretty good.

Over the following months we'd cover pretty much every footpath around Ledbury multiple times, enjoying exploring our local area while we waited for normality to return. I remember saying that we wouldn't bother with going to the pub when that happened because we found some better beer gardens in the hills and fields around our home town. That was a ridiculous idea though and we were straight in the pub as soon as they opened up. The family Zoom calls and golf games over the internet would stop though and I was back working in the office. It was obviously good that we could all go back to pretty much normal and that those who'd had a tough time could start trying to enjoy life again. I was lucky that it didn't affect me particularly negatively and apart from having to watch Bristol Rovers get relegated on my laptop, it was almost like a nice long break and a reset.