Last night was once again club night.

With no Anthony to troll him this week Marcin was going to have a stress free evening.

It was good to see and play some games with Jonathan. It’s been way too long since we last sat at table and played a game.

We started off with a game of flip 7 which I won comfortably. Somehow Marcin reached the heady heights of 26 points and never managed to add any more to his total.

Our next game was Rebel Princess. Which Marcin redeemed himself by winning easily. Luckily he didn’t manage to keep a zero points score. Can’t have him matching my zero score in the last game.

Our final game was Wild Gardens. It’s an interesting action selection, resource gathering, contract fulfilment game.

This one took nearly two hour to play. It could have been quicker but when one player has ap what can you do?

Marcin won this game to.

It was a fun evening apart from the ap inflicted player dragging the game out. Plus it was really great to see Jonathan again.

Thursday evening I caught the Met Office YouTube channel warning that after the weekend the weather would once again get worse.

So I mentally made a plan to go out with Dolly on my day off.

On our way out I needed to get some petrol inside the car, otherwise we weren’t going to get very far.

At the petrol station while paying I picked up a packet of beef jerky to use as a dog treat on the walk. Which wasn’t a bad option considering there were no actual dog treats to be bought.

We then headed off towards Roydon Common. But instead of parking at the first car park we carried on to the second car park.

This was a much smaller car park that was also in the woodland that I was aiming for on our previous walk.

We were seeing wildlife almost instantly. The woods were alive with bird song. I was pleasantly surprised seeing a butterfly fluttering across the path a couple of times. It was a brimstone I think.

The woods seem to be crawling (at l ast five) with Muntjac feeding just off to the side of the path. Dolly never even noticed them as they froze hoping not to be seen. Pretending to be a statue by the Muntjac allowed me to get the phone out for a photo.

The path we were on was the one I was hoping to connect up to when we came here previously.

Instead of connecting up with our previous route we cut across to edge of the wood that bordered the common.

It was on this return leg that we stopped to have a brew.

For this brew stop I was using the Boundless Voyage Titanium Cookware Set with the Phantom – Ultralight Stove.

While I was waiting for my water to boil I gave Dolly some water and we shared the jerky. By share I mean I had a couple of pieces and Dolly had the rest.

It was this return leg that I tried Dolly off the lead. I was forced earlier to briefly take her off so we could get over a fence using a sty and dog hole in the fence too far from the sty.

Dolly was really good off the lead. Didn’t run off, stayed close.

I think she enjoyed the little bit of extra freedom.

As we got close to the car park I put Dolly back on her lead. I’m glad she was. There was an owner getting out of his car, his dog not on a lead or his control. He had no idea I was there or with a dog. A fecking idiot. Luckily nothing happened but I hate stupid dog owners like this.

But that last bit aside Dolly and I had a great walk in the woodland. Plenty of little paths for us to explore on return visits.