Easter weekend on lockdown

Well, obviously there isn’t anything travel related to write about yet, but I wanted to share with you the joy we are having with our new inflatable hot tub! I’d say that the spa is great for 2 people, good for 3, but possibly might be “playing footsie” with each other with 4.  Although initially sceptical about getting one, particularly as I have no work at the moment, we went in for the first time last night and it was fab! I was really glad we got it. Perhaps not very private, as you can see from the photo below, but to be honest we don’t care, and no-one seemed to be looking.

So on arrival, when Paul was setting it up and inflated it, he found it had started to deflate. There was a small puncture. We didn’t want the hassle of boxing it up for a return, and as it turned out, they store had sold out and therefore they couldn’t have replaced it anyway. So Paul patched it up with Stormsure, the fantastic glue we use to repair any punctures in our other inflatables (canoe, dinghy, airbed) and after leaving it the recommended amount of time, he reinflated it, left it overnight to check, and thankfully all was well! The seller on Amazon is going to send us an extra repair kit just in case. We could possibly have negotiated more, or some money back, but Paul dealt with it, and he’s not as good as me at asking for compensation.

In addition to the hot tub and necessary chlorine, PH plus & minus and test strips, we have now also ordered a head rest for Paul, a drinks holder and an underwater light. I wasn’t bothered about the headrest, being a “shortie” it’s not necessary for me. I might get a seat, but if so, will use one out of the dinghy as we don’t tend to use them.

So we are now ready for our Easter “hot tub lockdown weekend”! The fridge is stocked with wine, beer and fizz. Our plastic picnic glasses and flip flops are at the ready, and our cossies drying in the bathroom (though if we go out when it’s dark we might just be tempted to “skinny dip”!)

If we do get up to anything else over the weekend I shall update (we might take the canoe out on the canal again, but are unsure if the police would allow us to class that as our “daily exercise”)…

Saturday update:

It’s now Saturday. We have had a good day exploring nearby places we have never walked before (or in one case, not since I was a kid). The weather has been lovely this afternoon, blue skies and hardly any cloud. A little chilly with the wind, but hey we do live in Scotland!

So we took a walk along the Kelvin towards Dawsholm Park. I was curious about whether the river walk extended all the way to Milngavie (it doesn’t) so we veered off to Garscube, a huge complex owned by Glasgow University to try and find out. I have a few classes at the sports centre there, but I have never explored beyond that. I also never realised just how huge the whole area is. We walked past the sports complex just a short distance and came to the river again. I met a lady from one of my classes who was out walking with her husband, and during the conversation they told us about Cairnhill Woods just nearby.

We decided to walk on and explore, and as it turned out these were woods I used to play in as a child, I just always called them the “bluebell woods”, so we must go back in May when the bluebells are out.

So ultimately we are finding some good within all of this crazy stuff. We are finding and exploring lovely places close to home that either we never knew how vast they were or places we (I) hadn’t visited in many many years.

On our way home, just before entering our estate, I stopped to take this photo which shows the path that we take along the river.

Since the weather is nice, when we got home we decided to have a BBQ while we are getting the hot tub heated up a little for an evening dip…