1st July - Second day of Cloverley Hall weekend

I had no problem getting up in time for the 8.30am breakfast this morning, but I think there were some of us who did! I spent the morning chatting to people. Also did an hour on First Aider duty by the pool. Only a few people went in, so that was quite a relaxing hour. The weather was lovely. It looks like this could be our hottest weekend away yet.
At 12.30 we set off to Hawkstone Park for a walk. I chose to do the two-hour walk as that seemed to be the most popular. The walk started with a steep ascent up to the monument. This was a tall tower with a viewing gallery at the top. Several members of the group decided to climb the steep spiral staircase to the top, but I didn't feel up to it. After a short rest, we continued on to the next folly. When we reached this point, Sarah announced that we needed to up the pace if we wanted to be back in time for the football as we had only done a third of the walk. My heart sank as I was beginning to find it difficult to keep up because of the heat. The rest of the walk proved to be quite hard as there were lots of steps to climb. Thanks to the encouragement of Alan and Elaine I made it to the end. Most of us bought ice lollies to cool ourselves down before making our way back to Cloverley.
Once we returned we all piled into the lounge to watch the match. It was much better watching it with everyone else. It made it much more enjoyable seeing everyone else's reactions. Some people couldn't bear to watch the penalty shoot out - we all know how bad England are at taking penalties. The final result came as no big surprise. Afterwards we all went outside for the barbeque. Unfortunately, Sarah decided to take a vote on whether to go ahead with the evening's quiz and most people voted against it. Pity - I was really looking forward to it. Some of us drifted back in to watch Andy Murray triumph against Roddick at Wimbledon. We then decided to have a stroll down to the pub as there wasn't much else to do. That pub must have done very well out of us as by the end of the evening most people had joined us. The day ended back in the lounge at Cloverley watching T.V. and finding out the big shock of the world cup - France had beaten Brazil.