I’m on the tail end of another large burst of work. I’ll have made for one of my clients in the last week what I normally invoice them for in three weeks! So I’ve only had time for work and puppy stuff the last few days. But today, I really had to get some groceries. I debated doing one final order with Tesco delivery since there are no full size grocery stores I can walk to and it’s a mile to a Tesco Express, but decided that I didn’t want to end up like in Hebden with too much food I need to use up and just get my groceries locally. Since I’m hoping to get to town tomorrow to do another self-guided walk (no time for that today), I didn’t particularly want to walk in to get my groceries. So I did some research and found another Tesco Express in the opposite direction and still only a mile from me.

So off I went around 10:30 this morning. Part of my route was through a park I go to daily with Puppy. She’s not a very good walker yet, so I didn’t want to take her all the way to the shop, plus I didn’t want to have to leave her outside. So she stayed home.

Considering the poor road signage for cars, there is decent pedestrian signage on footpaths. This is the first one I saw coming into the park. My destination is on the side you can’t see very well.

This is a park straight out of my childhood. It has a proper playground.

There’s big wide open field for playing with your dog or kicking a ball.

I used to love biking on tracks like these when I was a kid! You can also see a basketball court where some local girls like to rehearse their cheerleading routines.

I went under this railroad bridge.

I walked below the Shrewsbury Flaxmill, which is undergoing a major regeneration.

It’s a very interesting building. I can imagine those bits projecting out as flats with wonderful views of the park, not that that’s what they’re doing with them.

I came around the front and was impressed by all the scaffolding.

There’s an art installation in front of the building site to keep people from having to look at the grey walls for two years. So there are a bunch of paintings, like this “Monet.”

Unfortunately, the paintings are all on chip board and deteriorating quickly. Here’s another one that’s aging well, though:

One side of the street in this Shrewsbury suburb had buildings that made me think of apartment buildings I’d find back home, except maybe for the bay windows.

But the other side was definitely “English.”

OH?

It’s a “gold bead,” but not the kind of bead I was expecting.

As expected, the Tesco Express was small, but adequate except for lacking in unsweetened almond milk and having slightly higher prices than online. I was able to put together a decent shop for £20 and am pretty sure that I’ll only need to do a slight top up at the shop around the corner from the house as I only have a week to ten days left here (depending on if I take the owner up on her offer to stay a few days to go explore locally).

I came in and spent some time exhausting Puppy so I could then get back to work. Thankfully, I learned very quickly in my stay here that when she’s in one her manic moods, I just need to give her my undivided attention for 10 to 20 minutes and wear her out with some ball throwing before she’ll flop down for a two-hour nap and let me work. I was really concerned the first couple of days I was here that I wouldn’t be able to work with her being so insane sometimes and I’m glad that we’ve settled into a schedule that works perfectly for us both. I mean, by the time she’s done with her two-hour nap, I’m as ready for a break as she is for playtime! Minding Puppy has been exhausting, but so rewarding and I know I’ve done a very good job of it.

Back to work I go… I should be able to go have some fun tomorrow as long as the weather holds. If I do, there will definitely be sushi. 🙂