When we lived in Dorset, Somerset used to be our next-door county. I worked there for a while, in a little village called Marston Magna. We often went walking there. Sometimes we kayaked in Somerset, or shopped.

Yesterday we caught up with two more friends. The first lives in Minehead, and we hadn't seen her since 2019. We had, she remembered, been to Minehead once before, but we're talking a gap of 35 years, and I have to admit we'd both forgotten...

It's a very pleasant little town, but the weather was sadly against us. A little break in the cloud lured us up the switchback road to the top of Selworthy Beacon -- which commands (we're told) stunning views on decent days -- only to present us with a sea of mist when we got there.

A lull in the rain even lured us out of the car to walk along the ridge to Sir Thomas Dyke Acland's Memorial Hut: "Just a little drizzle," we said, "Nothing major." Then it was as though someone had turned a fire hose on us... Heavy rain. High winds. We scuttled back to the car, thoroughly routed.

But lunch at Toucan Wholefoods made up for our discomfiture (don't miss their broccoli, Stilton, and walnut quiche...)



Later that afternoon, we met up with another friend. The Otter Garden Centre near Taunton (don't miss the ginger cake) was a handy half-way house for both of us. And I figured out today that there was a 15-year interval here... Jeez... How time evaporates...

I find it moving, though, that reconnection with long-standing friends is still very possible. Easy, even.

We were due to meet some more friends today, but stupid covid intervened. (Yes, once again, our arrival in the UK coincides with an uptick in the covid infection rate...)

So we just had a bit of a walk around Weston-super-Mare, the weather being markedly better than it has been over the last few days.

We've been here before, too. Pre-diary, so I'm not sure exactly when, but a bit of reconstruction from later diary entries suggests it was 1990. We came to meet up with my parents, who had chosen this destination for that year's holiday coach tour. I remember nothing about the visit. But my 1993 diary records that it must have been the last time I saw my mother unmarked by dementia... By 1991, the first tell-tale signs were already there. In those 1993 entries, I recalled that we had a pleasant time with them in Weston, but it bothered me that I couldn't remember the last thing Mum and I said to each other (which, though we didn't know it then, turned out to be the last reliably lucid thing she ever said to me in person). This is the tragedy of dementia. The mother I knew disappeared, without saying goodbye, sometime after that holiday in Weston-super-Mare...

Anyway, it's a fine British seaside town, and today it was looking its best:









This has been a very pleasant interlude, but tomorrow, Day 44, we're heading for our journey's first key objective: Newark.