Walking (slightly cheating)

My normal Sunday 15km walk has a bakery about two-thirds of the way around (if you go clockwise, which I did) and we needed bread, so I stopped and got bread, then had to carry a slippery plastic bag, which was a pain ... so I hired one of those wee orange electric scooters that infest the cities of the world at the moment (not my photo, that is Brisbane...)

It was SO MUCH FUN. Took a while to get it started (instructions are NOT designed for middle-aged women without their reading glasses) but once I got it up and running the actual scootering was very straightforward. And FUN did I say how much FUN? Zipping along the pavement - luckily mostly empty - up the long slow slope to the back of the bush track. I couldn't take it through the reserve so had to walk the last bit over the hill, but totally worth it. And no injuries, except to the bread, which I dropped at one point and had to go back for, but didn't run over it, so all good. Best $5.95 I've spent all week.

This was earlier on in the walk, a perfect spring day. Our lockdown has ended, and a whole raft of other restrictions lifted much sooner than planned too, despite the ACT's government deep commitment to Fortress Canberra. As anyone could have predicted, once the surrounding NSW restrictions ended, there was no point in trying to hold the line - tens of thousands of people go from NSW to the ACT each day for work or school or shopping or doctor and there have been standing exemptions for people who live in the ' border bubble'. When NSW had restrictions on travel that was fine, they couldn't go outside their region either, but when that was lifted it was crazy that the border people could travel anywhere in NSW and then into the ACT, where ACT residents couldn't leave. So at midday on Saturday they unexpectedly lifted the restriction for regional NSW and three hours later my husband had packed a bag and left to go and check on our little beach house. Which is fine, thank goodness! And he had a lovely day and a half and I will take a longer break after this parliamentary sitting, which will be AMAZING.

Here is the last struggle up the hill, it was starting to cloud over, just as well, I was getting a bit warm. And I've just seen that they're going to open up the shops again in the ACT - another ludicrous consequence - I can drive 15 minutes to the Kmart in NSW and shop, but the one 15 minutes in the other direction in the ACT is still closed. Which has been pissing off the ACT retailers no end so I'm not surprised they're changing that one! And bars and restaurants too, people have been going over for a beer, and I don't blame them. Good try ACT government, but geography wins every time.