Beltane: Day 1

Well, Beltane season began today, but sadly it isn't going to be the week we had planned. Poor Rob's been really quite ill for over a month now, and it's been a tough time for him. Unfortunately - with the worst timing in the world - just as Rob was starting to see the light at the end of the tunnel, I ended up spending an entire day in A&E with a throat so badly swollen I couldn't breathe or swallow properly. It turns out I'd managed to come down with one of the worst cases of tonsilitis I can remember having (and I've had some bad cases).

We'd got a little holiday planned in Bakewell for April, as we do every year, and we really didn't want to miss it, despite everything that's happened. It won't be the walking holiday we'd planned, but we came to Derbyshire on Sunday (with a first aid kit that looks like a field hospital) to convalesce and recuperate for a couple of days.

‘Beltane’

I've got a whole week's worth of Beltane/May chapters to read in Ronald Hutton's The Stations of the Sun this season, so I'm starting (appropriately enough) today with 'Beltane'.

Lambs and Hills

Again, not quite the Beltane week of adventures we had planned, but we took a very short trip out this afternoon and saw some hills and some lambs today, so that was nice.

Beltane Candle

We lit our Beltane candle from Chalice Creations to mark the start of the season tonight... Ylang-ylang, jasmine, geranium and frankincense are the scents of our Beltane fire this evening.