The sun made an oh-so-brief but very welcome appearance yesterday afternoon, so, with my husband working from home for several hours and most of the home-learning completed for the day, I seized my opportunity to escape! Along with Kai, our husky, I headed for a leisurely wander around the beautiful Belvoir Forest Park, hoping to find some wild garlic to forage along the way. We spent a beautiful two hours meandering through the trees, pausing to watch so many varieties of birds chirping and hopping around – it was so peaceful and exactly what I needed.

Kai enjoyed a cool paddle in the river and I did find a great patch of wild garlic – batch of wild garlic pesto coming up! It was such a still afternoon and I enjoyed gazing at the reflections of the trees from Morelands Meadows in the River Lagan with sunshine on my face feeling like a long-awaited treat – it’s on days like this that I am reminded that slowing down to notice is always so worthwhile. We hurtle through life these days at a hundred miles per hour and at that pace we miss out on so many life-enriching details. I’ve been finding the monotony of these days at home a real struggle at times and I’m sure I am not alone in saying that, so it felt really self-supportive to carve out a little bit of time to go off on a solo adventure to explore and unwind. I wasn’t out for long but I had a spring in my step for the remainder of the day and even had a little wave of creative inspiration regarding Wild Women Events (watch this space ladies!) – evidence that even a short spell outdoors in nature is always beneficial for body and mind!