My return visit to Dunstable Downs back in October was one of my highlights of the year. The weather was amazing and the memory of sitting on the grass, watching gliders fly over our heads and hearing so many kites whip around in the breeze will stay with me for a long time.

My main memory from my first trip there a decade ago was of my niece Millie sitting on a stump eating an ice-cream, so when I got to re-visit there today with her, we had to recreate the photo.

It's been 4150 days since she was last here and she's gone from a tiny and cute 19 month old to a girl who becomes a teenager in a matter of weeks- eek!

It's amazing that she's aged 11 years, 4 months and 11 days in that time but what's even worse is so have I- and I felt every second of that aging by the end of the day.

The weather on our walk was not good- cold, windy and rainy- but we all appreciated being out of London and in the fresh air. I think too much oxygen must have got to our brains as in the blink of an eye we went from looking at someone walking up a steep slope, and debating whether it was impossible, to walking it ourselves. I blame the oxygen but it was 90% the influence of my sister who is very hard to say no to.

So before I knew it we were sliding down a very muddy, slippy and bumpy slope (of course I wasn't wearing proper walking boots so spent most of the time on my bum) and then looking up, with some trepidation, at the steep slope we had to navigate to get back up again.

Was it worth it? Yes. Was I proud we did it? Yes. Will my thighs ever recover? Hopefully.