Cheering Mark Up

Poor Mark has had a rotten return to work this week.  During the first week of our holiday we heard that a contractor, who was also a good friend, had died.  He was fishing on the rocks at Tintagel in Cornwall and an unexpectedly large wave washed him off.  He drowned before anyone could get to him.  It was in the national news at the time.  Mark took time off work to go to his funeral on Thursday afternoon.

Mark and Dave were working closely on a multi-million pound project just before the holidays.  Dave was supposed to be creating paperwork to support the spend ready for Mark's return to work.  On top of the loss of his friend Mark is having to handle the implications of this missing paperwork, which had resulted from weeks of meetings.  Mark's boss had the audacity to ask it would be ready for next week THEN sent him to a sequence of unrelated meetings for the rest of the week.

By yesterday evening Mark was exhausted, stressed and really unhappy.  I'm used to seeing him frustrated by the working environment created by his boss but I was worried that he needed space to come to terms with Dave's loss properly.  It hadn't really hit him while we were away... but had hit him fully once he went back to work.

Anyway, Mark tends to chill and quietly process his thoughts when we are walking so today we did a real BIGGIE.  We parked the car at Bewdley, walked up the River Severn, then picked up an old railway track that cuts into the back of the Wyre Forest.  We then created a walk of about 9 miles along forest tracks and back down into the town. 

 

The path that follows the old railway line..  Sometimes you can hear the whistle from the steam engines on the Severn Valley Railway.  A strange quirk of acoustic make them seem very close at this point.  It's almost like a ghost train is following us along the track!

 

Tracks in the main part of the forest.  A lot of the coppices are old Oak trees.  In a couple of weeks they will be really beautiful as they start to change colour.

 

After all this hard work we had to stop for lunch in our favourite cafe.  Normally I dissuade Mark from the chocolately cake pudding but today he looked like he needed a bit of sugar...!