05 22 am

Feeling rather proud I managed to get up early...fortunately it was cooler this morning, and Nobu insisted we make it over to Kuraki park for a long walk. There are quite a few cat haunts on the way: Nobu and Claire go into point and set, but they've learned not to chase after the cat, and Nobu seems satisfied that I praise him for finding me a cat, and is willing to come away after some prolonged setting. Claire gets overexcited faster, and runs wildly in circles to let it out, but we get to the park eventually, and they splash in the pond and streams to cool down. Since it's still excruciatingly hot even in the evenings after five or six, the evening walk is perforce shorter, so we indulged, 7413steps on my pedometer, no wonder I wanted breakfast and a shower when we got home :)

 I love the woods in the park myself, and the dogs' exhilaration is catching, hither and thither, up steps and into brushwood, dodging bushes and catching scents in the long grass. Today we went round anticlockwise, along the edge of the coppice by the children's fort with a quick splash in the terraced reeds, behind the greenery out round the edge of the park, a first, and at Nobu's behest, then up the imposing main entrance staircase with barrier free slopes to the promenade, and then onto the new jogging path circling the far side of the park, where this picture was taken. After completing the semicircle round the perimeter, we looped back for a drink in the new kid's playground, disturbing two crows who were paddling at the drinking fountain, and sauntered on to the elm tree coppice to look for cats, pigeons and squirrels. Claire decided to climb up into the woods again, and we bounded round in the cool morning air before slowly exiting down the steepest track to the terraced rushes. A quick splosh in the stream at the foot of the hill, Nobu hesitating to jump in from the rocks, and then making the move as Claire wandered up and down in the muddy channel, a splash through the edge of the pond where the scent of cats seems to linger, and then one loop round the pond to dip again, disturbing the waterlilies and carp on the far side, before I insisted we make tracks for home as I could feel my energy begin to dissipate.