Trees of life

04 Oct 2020 1 Comment

by Carole Gardiner in Uncategorized Tags: , , , , , , ,

I often find the adverts while scrolling through Facebook quite annoying, but recently one caught my eye. The Woodland Trust is dedicated to the protection of woods and trees throughout the UK by planting trees, restoring and caring for woodlands, especially ancient woods. In this particular advert they were offering the opportunity to buy memorial trees in a woodland of your choice and to help fund all this amazing work.

My dad grew up in the West Midlands, in the Black Country. My grandparents eventually settled in Halesowen and every Whitsun break as a child, my family would spend a week visiting them and going on lots of day trips. Heading off in my granddad’s mini clubman, we went to Clent Hills, Kinver, Hagley woods and many other lovely places for long walks on hills, through bluebell covered woods, in land sea-less sandy beaches (Kinver). There was always time for egg and cheese sandwiches and a cuppa from a proper teapot heated up with my granddad’s calor gas cooking ring.

These were treasured times that I look back on with so much love, the countryside was so beautiful and I loved spending time with my grandparents, especially granddad.

So imagine my joy when I discovered that there was a place just 5 minutes away from my grandparents old house in Halesowen called Uffmoor Wood. I made a donation and bought 3 trees in memory of my dad, granny and granddad Gardiner, in Grove 2 of the woodland.

A couple of weeks ago I decided to go and visit along with my mum and son number two, Jake. We had a lovely walk and saw quite a few deer milling around on our way down to Grove 2.

The trees aren’t actually marked in anyway to identify who has bought which tree, you just enjoy the woods knowing that in some small way you are contributing to the vital work of the Trust.

Planking disaster

01 Mar 2015 Leave a comment

by Carole Gardiner in Uncategorized Tags: , , , , , , ,

The planking challenge for February didn’t go according to plan, I only managed 2 attempts of planking for 20 seconds and that was a limb shaking effort!

But on a positive note, the reason why I’ve neglected the planking challenge is that I’ve been busy being active in other ways. For sometime now I have been walking part of the way home everyday, which is approximately a 25 minute walk and a couple of times over the last few weeks I have extended the walk, so very soon I should be walking all the way home. I have downloaded a pedometer on my phone and aim to do 10000 steps a day.

In addition to the walking and my weekly zumba class I have joined my local Back to Netball group. This is a nationwide initiative to get women back into playing netball in a friendly and pressure free environment. I played in the netball team in primary school, secondary school and college and absolutely loved it, but as that was at least 32 years ago so as you can imagine I don’t feel anywhere near good enough to play in a team. Just the very mention of the words “try out” fills me with dread. I’ve only been to 3 netball sessions so far but I’m really enjoying it, although I’m very out of practice and really need to work on my defending skills. Maybe before the season starts again I’ll be up to joining a team, but for the moment I’m happy just getting back into the swing of it.

I feel so blessed to be able to build up my fitness after suffering from chronic fatigue syndrome, while I was ill I never thought I would have the opportunity or indeed the strength ever again to live a fulfilling life. I hope by sharing my experiences I can bring hope to sufferers of this debilitating illness and belief that there is light at the end of the tunnel, even if it seems a very long one.

back to netball