And we started so well

We started to do the Grand Tour because I’d missed a text from V earlier in the week about going out of town to do a longer walk. And, by doing a walk in town, J could also join us.

I arrived at V’s to the comment, ‘you look more like you’re going shopping than walking’, as, once I knew we weren’t heading for wet grass and mud, I wore my heels and suit.

We started to doing the walk in reverse, with the last pictures on the list. We should have known how it would go when, arriving at the Castle Museum, I declared that I had to look in the gift shop*.

After that, it went well for a time, as we followed the route past the Coppergate Centre, across to the Merchant Adventurer’s Hall, and up the Shambles. We had another stutter when V had to go into Marks and Spencer. At this point, J left us, as she had to go to work, and we wandered into St Sampson’s Square, where the nice people from The Big City Read 2008 were giving out free copies of The Railway Children.

Having deviated, we headed back to Grape Lane, and saw another couple of pictures. It was at this point that we really did get distracted, as V was looking for shoes, and there are quite a few shoe shops around there. There were also quite a lot of shops with sales on!

By this point we were getting very hungry, but I wanted to go to Hobbs’s sale before lunch. I think it was when I was trying on my third jacket that I realised that the walk had become shopping.

After lunch it had begun to rain. ‘Well, we can’t go and look at pictures in this’. Neither of us said anything about the fact that we were also carrying a number of shopping bags by now!

Our final port of call was Fenwick’s, where we stopped for a drink, and realised that it was getting on for 5 o’clock. Just where had the day gone?

As we walked by to J’s, where I’d parked the car, we went to see one last picture. I think the photo says it all really, and sums up a successful handbag walk. And, after all, we left some pictures to see later.

*which, by the way, is excellent