This afternoon with the family I went out into the Lower Weardale Durham City outskirts for an adventurous winter walk into the centre of the city and back. I had intended to take the family up to Yad Moss in Upper Teesdale but it was way too cold for Fiona and a touch exhausting walking around the Yad Moss slopes.

Anyway, through a increasingly snowy and sombre sky we padded around the River Wear and God bless them, the Durham University students were having a boating regatta in subzero temperatures and there were about hundred young people and some oldies on the water with their coxed and non-coxed fours and twos. One young guy was sat in his boat with his shirt off and a good set of muscles bracing against the very cold wind and the snow. Brilliant, there is always one who just has to do it their way.

We saw very little bird life because the regatta crowd was taking up a fair bit of space on the River but walking up to Durham Cathedral from the West End was atmospheric and moody due to a lowering of the cloud as we approached the city. We had biscuit break in the Courtyard and after 5 min Clifford was complaining about being really cold which isn't surprising because he is very long long limbed and has a lot of muscle on him but it is all stretched out which must lose the heat a lot faster than a meso morph like Miles who seemed totally happy in it as usual. So was I, I love the cold. Then again knowing my youngest son as I do I did tell him to put on his body warmer for the walk, back at home, and he said he didn't need it and for once I allowed him to suffer the consequences of his own decision and cold he got. He's a good lad, it got even better when we got home when he was very surprised how fast I worked out 10% and 1% of some calorie comparisons we were doing between Greek yoghurt and the chocolate synthetic gunk that Fiona and Miles are having for their treat tonight. He complained that he did not understand what I was saying because I had not explained how I had arrived at the answer to which I countered with "You should understand how to do percentages in your head by now!" Oo, given his fairly good mathematics abilities it felt good saying that. I then also offered the idea that children's intelligence is often an average between one parent and the other and that when it came to percentages it looked like he was at the lower parent end. Much laughter and he is a good laugh because he can be on the receiving end of a joke as well as tell them.

Durham Cathedral was all lit up inside because it was so dark outside in spite of it being only mid afternoon but it gave the building a completely different look because most times they do not have the internal lights on and we could see all of the nooks and crannies which greatly added to the beauty of the sandstone and construction. A wonderful place, often with a quiet feeling particularly today in the winter light.

Walking back to the car we all got a bit cold in part because we were not walking at our usual pace due to Fiona still not being quite up to scratch. This persisted even when we got home and I have had to put the heating on for a whole hour in order to get the house warm. Tomato sauce and meatballs are on the way prepared by yours truly and we are having my favourite fat pasta with it which really cheeses Miles off because believe it or not he finds it hard to eat. It is just really long and chunky cylinder like pasta which I absolutely adore. A lovely afternoon out, at the back end of a good day and an evening of Star Trek and wonderful music crashing out with Fiona will follow.