A quieter week than of late, but not without its highlights.

I spent some of this week reading Sourdough by Robin Sloan, and making bread and soup (not unrelated); also spent some time looking at a big rocket that put a car into orbit; and some more time daydreaming about radio. I managed to run home from work once, and I also tried my hand at pixel art with a nifty Android app.

I also spent rather too much time this week angry at an online retailer who responded bafflingly to a delivery mess-up. It makes me quite upset now to think how much mental energy I was forced to waste on that little episode, but it's just the way my brain works.

Imbolc / Candlemas

At some point in the week, thanks to my Pebble watch, I realised that the sun would rise before 0730 and set after 5pm - both rather neat milestones. For a brief, coffee-fuelled minute I dreamt of a quarter days type of system which showed the days on which sunrise and sunset times crossed a certain threshold from one mid-season milestone to the next.

Sometimes it's nice to extrapolate these seemingly abstract patterns, like a moon phase chart which inevitably ends up having a lovely natural rhythm to it ala the Fibonacci sequence.

Suffice it to say that once the coffee high had passed, I did not, in fact, plot a new solar calendar with my new quarter days marked.

But I was interested to read, in my trusty bedside companion Almanac, of the festival of Imbolc (see also Candlemas) that falls on the 1st or 2nd of February and marks the halfway point between the winter solstice and the spring equinox. It appears like a marker pointing uphill towards the re-emergence of spring and life and light and, honestly, hope.

For too long this winter I have languished under a slightly-too-heavy fug of darkness and... not quite negativity, but a habit of using the shorter days and darker evenings as a scapegoat for inaction or procrastination. This is nothing new, of course. I've read several articles this Winter, as I often do, about Seasonal Affective Disorder, and of the natural reaction to this uncanny lack of daylight.

But for all its negative connotations, it is a perfectly natural occurrence, and a very cyclical, predictable one. So perhaps wallowing in it slightly is the correct response. We react to long, warm evenings by spending time outdoors enjoying nature; so it is that we should react to cold, dark nights by bundling up indoors getting our hygge on.

Reading about Imbolc/Candlemas, and noting the passing of a threshold of day length, I felt renewed energy and optimism and will attempt, now, to stride forward towards spring.

Certainly, it helps when the winter weather is crisp, and bright, and fresh, as it has been many times this week. There are even signs of spring emerging from the cold earth: bulbs are sprouting, and crocuses are making an appearance. We - and they - will continue to be caught out by harsh snap frosts and sudden hail showers, but we're all remembering how to push up out of the murk and the mire, and to salute the sun once more.

The London LOOP

Last Sunday, Megan and I started on the London LOOP*, a 150-mile path forming a ring around London.

* The 'L' in LOOP, of course, stands for London, making this not just a clunky name but also an example of RAS syndrome

This is not our first circular walk, nor even our first circular walk around London, as we completed the Capital Ring last February. That 78-mile walk took us exactly two years, done in fifteen sessions whenever we fancied it.

Now a year has passed since we completed it, and we have lately felt bereft. The London LOOP is, therefore, the only sensible sequel. We had looked at doing the Thames Path, but logistics mean such one-way walks are trickier to tackle in chunks. We will shortly be doing the South Downs Way in one go. But the London LOOP has come into our lives when we needed it most, and it is a long-term goal.

If 78 miles in fifteen sections took us two years, who can say how long 150 miles in 24 sections will take us. That is not the point. These walks give us the permanent Plan B, the perpetual answer to the question, "What shall we do this weekend?"

The first section

And so last Sunday we did the first section, and yesterday the second. The first was necessarily quite industrial, with tidal defences, refuse tips, and the rather barren sections of marshland where nothing much happens beyond the presence of some ponies and a few thousand seagulls. The Dartford crossing loomed in the distance for much of the day.

It wasn't really until the end of the first section, at Bexley Old Town, that we were amongst scenery I found attractive. Before then it had all had quite a stark quality to it. Fortunately, we found a warm welcome inside a Greek taverna at Bexley where we filled up on some great food.

Pictures are on Flickr (which is still A Thing):

The second section

The second section, tackled yesterday, was altogether different from the first.

Here we had miles of a rural-feeling riverside walk as the Cray burbled past. We saw elegant stone bridges, pretty parish churches, and our path took us through lovely patches of woodland.

An unexpected presence - compared to the omnipresent green parakeets - was a large number of pieces of natural woodland infrastructure. Infrastructure is probably too 'hard' a word for it, but we saw erosion protection in the shallow bed of the Cray river formed from flexible wood, and when we had left the Cray behind we saw delightful examples of recent live hedgerow fencing.

We, of course, passed noisy roads and a miniature spaghetti junction where we crossed the Sidcup bypass. But the natural bits felt deliberately, obstinately more natural and authentic in protest.

Once we'd arrived at the end of the second section, we realised that earlier ambitions to push on to the third were not worth pursuing. That cursed winter day length was not on our side, and the sudden, unexpected hail showers that greeted us on our arrival at Petts Wood also put an end to the day's walking.

One further unexpected highlight of this section was literally uncovered in the grassy parkland of Sidcup Place.

Looking down at some tree roots that needed extra care while traversing, I noticed the face of a bottle mostly buried in the mud. Realising it was also embossed, I considered it worth a second or two to establish whether it was of further interest.

When I spotted the words 'mineral water', I committed and spent a few minutes clawing at the cold earth to retrieve what turned out to be a perfect specimen which I was able to carry home and clean up.

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It turned out to be a clear glass bottle, something like 250ml in capacity, from Chislehurst Mineral Water Works (not so far away), with a crest marked HL after Harry Line, the founder. Dating it won't be easy, but a quick Google tells me that the factory opened in the 1880s, was bought out by Whitbread in the 1950s, and closed in the 1980s.

I'm not sure if the Whitbread buy-out would put an end to the local branding, but whether the bottle is 20 years old or 120 years old, it was a nice find and a great souvenir from a very enjoyable walk.

Photographs from the second section are also on Flickr (click through for the full set):