Freezing but Gorgeous (scenery, not me!)

Day 73

We were back to our usual route around Bradford today so there were no lorries speeding past to whisk off my bobble hat in their wake. And neither did I have to take in the delightful smell of diesel fumes. But most of all, it was the most beautiful wintery day. Look at these pics. I mean, we are lucky to live in such a beautiful part of the world (Trowbridge aside), and on a frosty morning it is just gorgeous! In Freshford we walked past a water fountain that was splashing onto the grass and as the water froze it created these little icy flowers. Amazing. Not so amazing was being followed by the recycling lorry which seemed to stalk us all through Freshford and Limpley Stoke. Maybe the bin men couldn't get enough of the sight of two middle aged women wrapped up like polar explorers!

Pelvic Floor Exercises

Day 70

Some days I am just daft. I rushed home from work today to walk 5 miles before cooking tea for the family. It was blooming freezing and I was wrapped up like Edmund Hillary/Sherpa Tenzing/Prince Harry on a trek to the North Pole. But the worst part was that I got as far as North Bradley (so not quite as far as Harry) and needed the loo. So I marched for the next hour exercising more muscles than just my legs! I must now have a pelvic floor of steel. How did Harry cope? Did they show that on the tele?

 Harry's just spotted the loo

And it was an awful walk. At that time of day everyone was rushing home; when a lorry went past my bobble hat flew off in its wake so had to go scrabbling around in the undergrowth to retrieve it. It was a great look.

So I felt pretty good about having done the walk, but it's not likely to be something I'll repeat. Living in a town makes it a bit tricky to find walks that avoid main roads. Maybe we should move somewhere more rural in the next 2 months so that I can go walking somewhere without main roads?

Walking to Scoland and Ireland

DAY 68

Today we walked to Scotland and Ireland and it only took us an hour and a half. We are such quick walkers these days, or we have really long legs, or we have seven league boots, or we are lying, or maybe it was Scotland and Ireland near North Bradley! No prizes for guessing correctly.

It was a bit of a rubbish walk in spite of that little quirky bit and we didn't even stop for a cuppa, although Chez Helen was quite nice at the end, sharing the last of the Christmas cake and looking out onto the garden. But on the whole I prefer the walks around Bradford to those around Trowbridge. This photo makes the best of a road that is really just a long walk with huge lorries hurtling past!

Scary cows!

DAY 61.

We've been so lucky with dry days for walking up until now. No doubt this will change and then we'll see how committed we are to our walking programme, but Andrea wasn't feeling well today and still soldiered on, so that's pretty impressive!

 

This was the view from above Avonliffe. If you look closely you can see the cafe by the bridge that has great toasted crumpets and stuff.

 

Today's drama was an unpleasant encounter with cows and dogs. In a contest, I think we preferred the earlier encounter with the electric fence!

 

The drama went like this: Our path to a gate was blocked by a herd of cows and while we were mustering courage to walk past them, we spotted a dog walker in the field, so decided to wait until they had passed through the gate. But no, the fates were frowning, because then another 2 dogs arrived, with owners, and then all 3 owners and dogs stopped in the field to chat. This is all fine and friendly, but we were already worried about walking past these cows, and now the dogs were bouncing around the cows and making them jumpy and nervous. Well, as a townie, this was just terrifying for me. If these cows decided to move en masse, then their only way to go was straight at us in the field just in front of them! Andrea had her walking stick at the ready to defend us, and I was staying right with her (I was actually staying with her stick, but that was attached to her, so...).

 

It wasn't pretty:

Us: "There's a sign on the gate saying that dogs should be on leads"

Dogwalker 1: "No, dogs shouldn't be on leads"

Dogwalker 2: "They're a different breed of cows"

Us: "Well I don't know about cows or dogs; I just know that I'm scared!"

 

The conversation then ended because we had reached the gate and made a swift exit before the frisky dogs and cows stampeded!

 

Next week we'll be taking a different route to avoid both cows (any/all breeds) and unfriendly dog walkers!

With the Winsley Walkers

DAY 60. I have been very happily invited to join the Winsley Walkers; a lovely group of ladies who get together once a month for a muddy walk and pub lunch. Its very civilised and I'm not sure if the mud is essential to the walk, but its always a feature.
We started off at Claverton and walked in a loop taking in Sham Castle and part of Ralph Allen's ingenious track that he built to transport the stone from the quarry at the top of the hill at Combe Down so that gravity would help to move stone down into Bath. I got very excited to see the original grooved tracks that remain on the long, straight, downhill route to the canal; 300 years old and they are still so clear to see!

I was  already fascinated by this picture of how the tracks had been at the time when Bath was being developed into the City that Jane Austen and I have come to know and love. Ralph Allen created a system of pulleys and tram like tracks to overcome the problem of getting large volumes of stone into Bath for the new houses that John Wood was designing and which is now synonymous with the City.

With the whole team

DAY 55. My gorgeous, fabulous, super duper daughter joined us today for our walk. (Yes, she was standing over me and made me write that!). I asked her to send me a photo of us on our walk and this is the one that she sent. We don't usually go walking in January wearing summer dresses and make-up, but my memory is not what it was...

The plan is for all 3 of us to do this marathon walk for ME and today Heather was able to join us. I tried to put a link in there but it failed, my IT skills are rubbish so I'll try it again another day. If you want to make a donation to support us, look up Katharine Cheston Just Giving. So, back to the walking. All went well with todays walk apart from lunch. Andrea and I ordered soup but it was DISGUSTING - beetroot, watercress, spinach and rocket. Now that I've written that down I can see that it was always going to be a bad choice, but it seemed like a comforting bowl of soup at the time. Fortunately Heather chose a large piece of tiffin so I was able to nick some of that, otherwise it was going to be another disastrous walk.

Nearly home and we spotted a whole flock of family members, although this photo doesn't really show up their true colours!