What a great week!

Not only did the sun come out and it's been warm but I got some time to enjoy it too. Well, you've got to get the work life balance right haven't you and having spent much of last weekend working, I decided to make the most of the fine weather and spend less time indoors.

Not only did I manage to cycle into town twice - exercise and sunshine, although the wind was still cold, so not quite as warm as it seemed, but I got to sit in the sunshine and enjoy a coffee at the Meeting Place one day and catch-up with a friend for lunch later in the week.

All change by Thursday. I spent the day up at Kingston dewpond near Lewes on a grey day with a particularly cold wind whipping across the Downs. As part of the South Down volunteer rangers, we were finishing the fencing round the pond and installing a gate. It was a joint effort between the Central and Eastern groups - although only two of us had turned up from Central this time, there are usually half a dozen. It took us about an hour to get the truck loaded up with posts, rails, gates etc. The rest of the team were waiting for us at the bottom of the hill by the time we got there.

It's incredibly hard work digging post holes, especially down into the chalk and flint. It took four of us the whole day to dig the holes for four posts round the gate, put in the bolts and rail. There were a variety of tools to break up the flint and extract the earth from the hole but most of it down to good old manual labour.

Much to Robin's delight - we managed to complete all the fencing and install the gate just in time. We'd been watching a large, ominous cloud getting gradually nearer and nearer. The rain started and the hail began just as we finished tightening the last bolts and hurried to get all the tools loaded up.

It made a change from sitting in-front of the laptop all day but I certainly ached afterwards.