A Solo Adventure

Yesterday I found myself with some time without the children, none of our usual home ed groups are up and running again yet so this is highly unusual at the moment, in fact I cannot remember the last time I had so much time to myself.  I could of course have dropped them off at their friends house and returned home, I could of spent the day pottering at home probably not doing very much, as is usual when I am free of distractions.  How is that we long for those times when we can just get on with things and not be disturbed, but when that time comes we can never remember all those things we wanted to do?

Having established that one friend was not free to meet up, I realised that I didn't want any company I wanted to go out for a walk on my own with my thoughts and the beautiful scenery as my companions.  I woke on Friday morning with that as my plan but not knowing where I was going to go.  In and amongst sorting food for the day for all of us, doing the laundry, some yoga and taking delivery of a large food order from a wholesaler, I made plans for where I would go.  I needed a lie down in a darkened room by the time I had sorted all that, not the adventure I had in store for myself!

As with everything I do there is always something to do on the way, having dropped the children at their friends house, I met with another friend to drop off some flour.  The large food order I mentioned was not just for me, I run a food group with the wholesaler and co-ordinate orders for several friends through my account.  Only one person had ordered this time, nearly 150kg of flour, it completely filled the boot of my small car and coated everything I put in there afterwards in a layer of white dust!  Having dropped off the flour I had to head into town to run a few errands that I had forgotten or not been able to do the day before. I was glad to finally get to where I was going to walk from, my time rather reduced by all the jobs needing my attention, but here I was all set to go.  

Well not quite.  I wasn't sure if I was going to have to pay for the car park I wanted to use, a quick look online before setting off didn't answer that for me.  I have a pot of change in the house which I keep for such times, except, you have guessed it, that is the one thing I had left at home.  My purse held a few pennies and the machine did not take cards.  Whilst I sorted my stuff I thought about what I should do, there was no where else to park, if I parked elsewhere it would mean a change of plans.  So I found an old receipt, my purse was full of those, and wrote a note explaining why I did not have a parking ticket in my car.  Finally, off I set.

I had chosen the location based on the weather forecast.  It was meant to be very wet in my part of the county but drier further west so that is where I headed.  I know a forecast is a best guess, on this occasion it was a pretty bad guess, almost as soon as headed off, the heavens opened.  Not just a little rain but a full on deluge.  Luckily I was walking in the trees at this point (the clump you can see in the photo above) so I didn't get too wet.  It was very drippy though as the rain filtered down through the tree canopy.  The path had been laid with stones in part, which are always a little treacherous in the wet, I nearly went flat on my face at one point early on, not a great start to my walk.  Treading more carefully I made my way up through the trees.  One of things that I love about walking on my own is the wildlife that you see as you quietly walk through the world, I was rewarded with many delights, including a red squirrel that was half way up a tree looking at something above it.  Annoyingly it was too dark for me to get a good photo as it stayed still like that for ages.

My destination was this tarn, the local word for a small lake, where I was going to have a swim.  It had rained a little more on my way up to here and the wind was rippling across the water in small gusts.  I hoped the rain would stay away whilst I got changed, I don't mind swimming in the rain, in fact I rather enjoy it, but getting changed in the rain is no fun at all.  The weather had other ideas for me as once again I was hit by strong winds and lots of rain, I was starting to wonder if this was such a good idea.  I sat it out for a while until it stopped and the sun came out and stayed out for my whole swim.  I would be lying if I said it was warm in that water, it wasn't, it was cold but so refreshing.  I managed 15 minutes in the water before deciding that I was cooled enough that I ought to get out. I needed to be able to get myself out of my wetsuit which I can't manage on my own if I get too cold!  The sun on my face was wonderful, as was the beautiful and wild surroundings.

Having got myself into many layers of clothing and drunk some soup I was still feeling a little chilled.  The tarn was pretty much surrounded by sloping land creating a bowl shape that was carved out by glaciers millions of years ago, I thought a walk uphill would help to warm me up.  As I squelched my way uphill I could feel the blood running again and my temperature started to rise.  I walked up to a high point and was rewarded with magnificent views and strong winds trying to blow me off my feet.  I could see rain blowing through the neighbouring valleys. The skies flickered from moody darkness to bright sunshine.

As I headed down to the car my thoughts, which have been swirling a little this week, were calm and still.  I felt happy and content after my adventure even it was slightly bonkers, it has filled my cup back up, I am ready to face the world and all it throws at me for the coming week.

A Daily Walk

One of the two reasons I leave my house these days is to go for a walk.  I am so fortunate to live in a beautiful place that is sparsely populated and I can go for a walk and rarely meet anyone, there is plenty of space on the occasions that I do, to keep our distance.

One of the many things I love about blogging is seeing photos of bloggers' local environment, especially when it is a very different to the one where I live.  I do hope this is something that you enjoy too as today I am going to take you on one of the walks that I have been enjoying this week.

I try and get out of a walk everyday on week days, not a long one but just to get some fresh air at the beginning of the day.  The terrible weather over the last few months has meant that this has not happened very often, so I am glad of the time to fit this into my days just now, especially as the weather has been so wonderful recently.

So grab yourself a cuppa, find a comfy place to sit, I am going to take you for a virtual walk.  Many of these photos are taken looking back at places I had just passed as I walking into the sun for some of the time.

As I put on my shoes and any layers that I need to keep warm, the view from my porch is the one I have shared a few times recently on my Peek into my Day posts.

I live on a main road, luckily for us it is a a quiet road, as main roads go.  At the moment the verges near our house are full of daffodils in flower.  These verges are maintain by the parish council, we pay through our council tax for the maintenance of areas such as these.  I love that they are a beautiful cheery sight at this time of year.

You can just make out a road maintenance vehicle in a lay-by.  They have been resurfacing large sections of the road through our village this past month.  It feels like it has been going on for ever.  It was work that badly needed doing.  It is adding five minutes to my journey to do the shopping as they have a convoy system to let you though the works, it is a good job I don't need to be anywhere by a certain time these days!

In and amongst these daffodils there is a fence around a well.  This would have been the water supply for my end of the village in the days before piped water.  It comes to the surface as a spring in the garden of a house to the right, it runs all year round.  It is piped under the road, and must continue underground, it is only visible in very wet weather as it creates a stream on the surface.

As I continue along the road I pass a cherry tree which is just starting to come into blossom.  It was lovely to see bees collecting the nectar.  Sights like these are wonderful after the grey and gloom of the winter we have just had.

A couple of crocus flowers sit nestled amongst the daffodils, opened wide to the sun that was shining in full glory.

Front gardens that I pass are also starting to bloom, a flowering currant.  I read this week that this plant has a strong smell rather like cat pee.  I don't have a great sense of smell and couldn't get close enough to test this out, perhaps that was for the best!

My walk along the main road comes to an end now as I turn left down a lane which heads towards more houses and fields.  It passes a big industrial unit that used to be a sausage factory and is now a warehouse for a company that makes noticeboards, whiteboards and exhibitions stands amongst other things.  It is good to see this site back in use as it stood empty for several years after the sausage factory closed and was looking a little dilapidated.  I am soon off the lane through a snick in the wall and into the fields.

Nearly all the edges of the fields that surround my village are built with stone, dry stone walls, the incredible art of balancing stones in layers to make beautiful and useful walls.  They do get knocked over occasionally and most are repaired by building the wall back up again using the same materials. The stones are all local and most will have come from the fields themselves cleared to the edges so that the land could be farmed.  This stone is limestone, but you will also find the odd bit of granite too, something that my village is famed for.

Across the second field I come to a different method of moving from one field to the next.  This is a kissing gate, a slightly different method to allow people and stop livestock moving from one field to another.  The gate on the right swings open to allow you to pass into the section on the left, you walk round the gate and swing it closed, it kisses each side of the enclosure as it swings open and shut, hence the name.  It is also fun to kiss over the gate after the first person has passed through!

From the kissing gate (which is just out of view in the bottom right) I head up hill, from the top of which I can look back and see where I have come from.  In the distance you can make out a lorry driving along the motorway that runs along the flank of the hill.

At the top of the hill is a house, commanding a position with great uninterrupted views to the front and back.  It is lived in by the people that Cameron works for.  I pass to the left of the house and through the gate.

Once I am though the gate I am in a network of walled paths, which are likely to be very old.  There are many of these tracks around my village, they are well worn and in places are much lower than the fields that flank them.  It is likely that this particular track led to and from an Abbey, the ruins of which can still be seen today.  I often wonder, when I walk these tracks, who has been there before me, what they might have been doing and where they were going.

The walled track meanders its way gently up, snake like across the land.  I am not going this way today, my route takes me left....

...into another walled track.  On one walk this week there were two butterflies doing a fluttering dance together in the sunshine landing on the sun warmed stone in the wall, they were not around when I had the camera with me. I meander down hill towards a farm....

...and fields of sheep with lambs.   There is a cacophony of noise, the lambs calling to their mothers.  I stand and watch the lambs gambolling around.  I love how they run and spontaneously jump, their gay abandon is heart warming and a lovely antidote to the worry that runs through our lives right now.  I watch for a while, their nervousness abating as I remain still.

As I leave the lambs to their gay abandon, I continue downhill where the track becomes very soggy and waterlogged.  The large stones in the photos above surround a spring, the field to the other side of the track has a similar spring both of which release their water onto the track.  Wellies are a must to negotiate this section.

I now leave the track, which continues to the farm, and head left into a field, empty today but on past days has been full of sheep with their lambs.  I am walking up hill once again, from the top I have a views to the left of the industrial side of my village a working lime kiln producing quicklime and lime products using locally quarried limestone, and to the right one of open countryside.  There is a house just out of view to the left in this picture, it is at the end of the lane past the warehouse building.  Access to this property is over a ford in the river on the left, an interesting prospect in the months of rain we have every winter!

From this high point I now head down hill towards a bridge over a stream.  To the right of this bridge is an area of flat land where there was once a mill.  Once upon a time there were four mills in my village, it is most likely they all belonged to the Abbey.  There is little to be seen of this one, or indeed any of them, except a few piles of stones and a large patch of nettles both indicators of sites of previous human habitation.

As I cross the bridge,  I love how to the left the stream falls in gentle steps created by large slabs of limestone. Sadly the sun had dropped at little by now and left the stream in the shade by this point so it is not the greatest photo.  I love to linger on this bridge and watch the stream flowing gently down, slowing flowing out to sea on its long and meandering journey.  This stream is part of an unusual watershed, one that flows North to reach the sea, most large rivers in England flow South.

Having crossed the bridge I head up a short slope where you can clearly see the line of an old wall or hedge, this was probably the boundary to one of the tracks leading to the mill.  The other side of the wall running across the top of the photo is the lane we have been on before, the one from the ford to the warehouse.  I am heading up to there to meet the lane.

The lane takes me up hill, where I can see to the left the route I took past the house and into the old walled tracks.  I pass a building which was built as a workhouse in the 1870s to house the poor, it could accommodate 60 people, it was later used as a boys' home and has now been converted into houses.  I walk round the building, over a stream and back to the warehousing which is just off to the left of the photo on the bottom left.

It is the home straight now as I return once again to the main road.  I notice the mail train going by, the red line running left to right in the middle of the photo.  I know it is 5.45pm without looking at my watch, it is never late!  This train is traveling South to London, we never see the train returning, I guess it must do the return journey at night.

I once again pass all the daffodils above which are tall trees full of rooks, loudly going about their nest building. The pavement will soon become splattered with bird poop, it is best to run this section!  I return home nourished by the fresh air, the exercise and the beauty of nature.

Thank you for reading, I hope you enjoyed the walk.  I will back on Thursday with my words on sustainable living. 

Winter Adventures

We have started this Winter with lots of days out enjoying the beautiful countryside we get to call home.  My husband was off work for 12 days over the Christmas and New Year period which gave us lots of time to have some great days out.

We got the canoes out for a trip around a local lake.  I love canoeing, especially as a family, but we don't manage it that often as the only day we can all go is on a Sunday.  I very often need the time on this day to get myself ready for the week ahead or do those jobs that there is not the time for during the week.  It was a grey day in the main with welcome odd sightings of the sun and enough wind to get the little sail out for the journey back to the car.  We were the only boats out and about, apart from the steamers taking folks out for trips around the lake.

Our friends who live in Scotland were down for a few days just before Christmas, we managed to spend the day with them and another family on a walk alongside a different lake.  We were so lucky that that it was another dry day with patches of sunshine.

Whenever we are at home for Christmas we go for a walk on Christmas Day.  We have kedgeree for breakfast which is really filling, we take snacks with us, there is no need for a picnic.  This walk is very near to where we live, the hills in these pictures are the view from my house.  The small amount of water in the middle photo is a reservoir that was built to supply water to Manchester about 100 miles away, it flooded the valley covering a small village, when we have a really dry summer and the water level drops you can see remnants of walls and buildings.  The water travels underground in a pipeline which is feat of engineering you can read more about it here.

My mountain bike was dusted off and taken out the garage for a rare outing.  I am not a massive fan of mountain biking I prefer to ride on roads.  My husband and Cameron go mountain biking regularly and love it when Alice and I join them.  We weren't riding together though as Alice and I opted for the wide open forest tracks whilst Husband and Cameron were on a purpose built mountain biking route that had no appeal for us!

Alice enjoyed our dusk walk on the Winter Solstice so much that she asked if we could do it again only this time staying out until it was properly dark.  We headed out at about 2 o'clock when most folks were heading back to their cars.  It was a wild and windy day with good views from vantage points, we were rewarded with a beautiful sunset and the thinest sliver of a newish moon.  It is something we are going to do again whilst the evenings are still dark fairly early.

We had plans to go for a big walk with friends on New Years Eve.  They challenged us to take them somewhere new, to them, so we opted for a ridge that my husband drives past on this way to work every day.  It was a glorious day, big wide blue skies with the odd fluffy cloud, once we got up on the ridge we could see for miles and had a 360° view.  We saw one other walker in the six hours we were out walking.  We covered 13km/8 miles mostly off paths and through some very wet boggy places in parts.  As we walked down off the ridge the sun dropped down behind the hills and it got very cold indeed.  We followed our walk with an evening meal at our house, seeing in the New Year with a glass of champagne and some inspired dancing and singing to Auld Lang Syne!

We haven't been on quite so many adventures since then but I have realised that at this time of year if you don't plan to go out you will never do it, you have probably worked that out already.  If we were to wait for the weather to be fair then we would definitely never leave the house.  We are planning on having a day out a week doing something, whatever the weather, throughout the Winter.  We have the clothing and equipment to cope with cold, wet days  and I have heard it quoted often there is no such thing as bad weather only the unsuitable or wrong clothing we don't have any excuses.  So Winter here we come!

Have you had any fun adventures yet this Winter?

Ramblings

In a sheltered valley not far from home nature is working its magic quickly, more quickly than at home.  It was alive with birds singing their hearts out and despite the lack of leaves still really difficult to see.  We did spot a few, Robin, Blue Tit, Long Tailed Tit, Song Thrush, Wood Pigeon, Grey Wagtail and Blackbirds.  The cyclists were out...

As were the leaves on the Hawthorn or May.  These are delicious in a salad when they are this lovely paler green. Ne'er cast a clout till May be out, don't forget to take your warm clothing with you until the May is in flower, was true we started off in t-shirts but were glad of a fleece and body warmer when the sun had gone.

The always wonderful Pussy Willow, the furry catkin of the Willow and Sallow trees, were a delight to see.  These always remind me of my childhood Easter as they were used as decorations instead of palm which doesn't grow in the UK.

The delicate remains of last year juxtaposed with a hint of growth for this.

Several reminders of what this land once was in years long past a level crossing gate, elegant and rusty,

a distance marker,

and a dripping tunnel which had a great echo!

When gorse is out of flower, kissing is out of fashion, so they say.  As gorse is usually in flower somewhere........sadly there was no one for me to kiss except a passing stranger.

The black tips of the ash tree, an easier one to identify in the winter and early Spring when there are no leaves on the tree.

The dogs mercury was pushing up its head everywhere.  A highly efficient plant spreading its rhizomes at up to a metre a year!  It's poisonous though, so don't be tempted to forage the leaves for your spring salads.

A trace of a visitor, we thought perhaps a fox?

There were lots of visible visitors out enjoying the warmth and the quiet of this valley.  I was on foot whilst the children rode their bikes so I was able to really absorb the tranquility, stopping to look and listen every now and again.  I was spooked by several others coming up behind me so lost I was in the magic of this place.  To quote a lovely comment on a previous post, a walk in nature is one of the most affordable luxuries this world had to offer.