Climbing mountains and being a wimp

A day child-minding yesterday. Having taken GrandSon4 to nursery school I decided to take a sleepy GrandDaughter3 for a walk in her sling: it's the only way she'll settle with me and give her mama a rest.

We set off for the river planning to walk alongside it as we did last time. Doing my bit to maintain countryside paths, I took the secateurs with me in order to cut back brambles threatening to block my path. once we got to the river, however, I had a different idea. I'm not going to say 'brilliant' this time as it wasn't.

On what was possibly the hottest day of the year, with baby strapped to my sweaty chest, I decided to walk up the mountain. Okay, okay, hill but it felt like a mountain.

And you know what hills are like. You see a brink ahead of you and think you must be near the top but when you reach it you see another one, and then another, and then another, but because they're all small stretches you think, 'It's not far; I might as well carry on now as I'm nearly at the top.'

But you never are. In the end I gave up because I didn't want GrandDaughter3 waking in the middle of nowhere and screaming all the way home.

When we came across the remains of a quite possibly medieval cart something occurred to me. If I fell and broke my ankle nobody would know where we were. Now that's okay when it's just George and me - we'd manage to crawl along - but baby and me is a different matter. I must be more responsible and take my phone with me on walks. Apart from anything else I could have taken photos.

The medieval plough - or possibly rusty excavator - we passed next to the ruined farmhouse would have made a good photo too. I kept telling sleeping baby we'd walk on and see what we could see from the top of the mountain but all that we could see was the other side of the valley, the other side of the valley, the other side of the valley was all that we could see. But very pretty it was. And we didn't see another soul.

And I only had one minor panic on the way down when we got lost briefly.

The day before I'd been looking after GrandDaughter2. We went to Brynmill Park where we pretended to be chased by pirates. 'We have to climb up here,' GrandDaughter2 said. She insisted I climb up with her. 'Now we have to escape down the pole,' she said.

So saying she swung herself onto and down it. 'Come on, Granny.'
'Um, how do I do that?'
'I'll come and show you,' said the four-year-old.
So she did and I tentatively stuck a leg out to wind around the pole, which, incidentally, is a lot higher than it looks in the photo. 'Oh, I can't, I'm scared.'
GrandDaughter2 sighed. 'Come down the slide then, Granny.'

I did but it was bendy and I didn't much enjoy that either. I am such a wimp.

Afterwards we went to feed the ducks on the pond and we saw

a family of coots (I believe) and

a moorhen and babies being harassed by ducks.