Thanks to my friend Sara and her smashing daughter PK, we had a new walk to try this evening (being Wednesday). But before we got to it, I was shocked to find that the little bit of rain in the night had done this to the grass verge! I'm sure it must be possible to see some greenery growing in real time, it shoots up so fast.
So we got to the new place within about four minutes. It's not very far at all, and it's also not new because it's been here for decades – I've just never explored it. Thomas has; he had a little expedition down here when he was in the Beavers. It's just across this road and in among those trees. I don't think it's ever very busy because, from this side, honestly, it looks a bit dodgy. There's just a little track to one side and you can't see where it leads. But it's not dodgy in the daytime. It's probably not even dodgy at night – we certainly didn't see any dodginess, though I wasn't really looking for any.
See, it's just really nice and woodsy. I'm just gonna show you a few trees now ...
Spindly, nettley (good for the butterflies, which we now know from the sign we saw on yesterday's walk – we're just learning so much!).
Peaceful and unexpected, because I had no clue this little place existed. I don't know what I thought was here, but it wasn't this. This looks like a picnic-y sort of spot if ever I saw one.
The path runs alongside the railway, so I perhaps imagined that the whole area looked like this. No one can really say that those railings are pretty.
You emerge in a little residential area (my friend Catherine Dawson used to live on this estate), which made me think that perhaps we'd gone the wrong way, but we hadn't – we just needed to rejoin the path up the road ...
... where we saw this sweet little sign. We didn't actually see any of the birds because we didn't see any birds at all. Not sure why. Anyway, please feed them seeds and not bread, okay?
Uh-oh, a fork in the road. I wasn't sure at all which way we should go. I thought I knew where the right fork would come out, but that seemed like a short path, so we took the left one. We made the right choice.
Because it led us onto the woodsiest of woods! Winnie the Pooh would love it here. In fact, I wonder if these woods are about 100 acres. I think they could be. I didn't think of that at the time, though, because I was looking for more ways into Narnia. But Narnia doesn't tend to lie at the ends of paths, so we didn't find it today.
Twisty turny. Matthew actually saw very little of the woods because he was reading questions to me from his phone. I indulged today – I don't usually when we're walking – because he was sorting me into my Hogwarts house and was very eager to know if I'd be in Gryffindor, same as him. I am. I kind of wanted to be in Slytherin because green's my favourite colour.
What are these? Birches? I'm only guessing that because of the silveriness of their trunks.
We eventually came out where I thought we would, next to the new road, the muck-spreaded field and the crematorium. You know this area as well as I do now! I half wanted to turn round and stay in the woods a while longer, but we were starting to get hurty feet because of our long, fast walk yesterday, and also because we were planning to explore another path, so we went through the kissing gate.
And headed across the road to the nice path where Captain Jack Sparrow kept me company on my musical walk a couple of weeks ago.
Neatly planted rows of ... something. We'll find out in the weeks to come because I'll walk here again – this is becoming one of my favourite places, and it's so close to my house. And, my friends Sara and Dawn walk here too, so maybe one day we'll bump into each other ... though not physically, of course, because that would be really stupid right now.
I just love this little path. I don't know what it is about it, but it's just found a little place in my heart and I think it will stay there. And if these trees continue to do well, this place will just become prettier and prettier.
We came to the end of Jack Sparrow's path and found the next path we were looking for, the one that goes to Slyne. This was the one I explored by myself accidentally a few weeks ago, and Matthew said he wanted to see it today. We stopped here and rested our sore feet while we had a cup of tea (in our Hornsea Pottery cups – these will always be with us now when it's not too hot for tea), and we drew funny looks again from people out on their walks. Are we so odd? Well, I suppose we are, sitting on pavements to drink tea and eat biscuits, with our blue and green hair. It's not a sight your average person sees every day.
But you know what, we gave up today and decided not to go to Slyne after all. We were hungry, Slyne was a good two or three miles away and we knew we didn't have five or six miles left in our legs. And that's okay.
This was the view from our tea-drinking spot on the pavement:
We went home. I remembered to take a photo of this amazing dormer. We pass it all the time, but I always forget that I haven't shown it to you. Isn't it pretty?
We could have been home in around four minutes from here, but I spotted that hill that I've scaled a couple of times now. Matthew still hadn't, so, 'hey, Matthew,' says I, 'shall we take a small detour up the hill?' He looked dubious, but I injected a little enthusiasm with a 'yeah, YEAH! Let's DO it!' and that seemed to convince him that it was a good idea. I mean, look, it doesn't seem very steep, does it?
But maybe it is quite steep when your legs are already achey from the previous day's six miles. I don't think we can say that being 12 is an excuse for tiredness anymore because Matthew is only a little shorter than me now! Man, my kids are giants!
But he made it, and so did I, and we were home just a few minutes later than we would have been had we not slotted in the hill, and a lot sooner than if we'd gone to Slyne.
Shall we have a rest day tomorrow? We might. But we might not!
WQ
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