Walk through a winter wonderland

Completed a great walk on Tuesday. Walked it before but I’d decided the first week I fully retire, on the Tuesday morning when Linda is at playschool (she still wants to work at playschool Tuesday and Wednesday mornings if I retire, which gives me two whole mornings to get up to trouble!), I’d do this walk again. It’s about the longest on my list and full of interest.

Anyway, finding myself on holiday this week I decided to have a practice run if Tuesday was nice. And beautiful it was too after a really hard frost overnight. Start blighted a bit… first as Linda heads out the door she says ‘you can meet me at the supermarket about 12:00 to help with the shopping if you want’. Great! Only leaves barely three hours and I know the walk took three and a half hours last time. Still, if it’s only me and I get a move on, so out the door I went pronto.

Then get a call from Linda… playschool has been cancelled because of frozen pipes, where am I? By then I was too far gone, being about a mile into the walk. Thereafter, apart from a text message from Becky shortly afterwards, all was blissfully quiet.

You can read more about the walk and see lots of photos and the maps by clicking here. It’s on this walk I experienced a couple of my most pleasant recollections.

First time I did the walk, ambling around a corner in the track, about seventy metres ahead of me were two adolescent hares playing in and out of a field edge of rapeseed. Standing stock still I watched them for ten minutes until they started ambling towards me in fits and starts. As they got nearer they wonder what I was and came to within a metre, looking up at me for a couple of minutes. They then got bored and scampered off… magic!

The other occasion was when Barry and I did the walk on a warm summer day, timing things perfectly to arrive at The Crown Inn at Broughton. This is a seriously nice pub… pleasant surroundings and a great menu. Highly recommended.

Not much been happening on the allotment. Too cold and the ground is rock hard with frost. Started planning the verandah to go on the front of my shed. Been musing over it for years, if you want a flavour of what’s been going through my mind click here. So well ahead with things I can get cracking over the Christmas break. Hopefully a plan will be published on the next post.

Thanks for reading my blog.