Catch-up

A couple of weeks have passed in silence, but that’s not indicative of my mileage having slipped. Here’s a bit of a catch-up:

Tuesday 8 February

With a mid-week trip to CenterParcs at Sherwood, Mick & I shunned our usual CenterParcs activities in favour of exploring the local area (with one eye on our rapidly approaching Big Walk Departure Date and continued lack of fitness). So, on the Tuesday I announced our intention to take a 5-mile stroll in Sherwood Pines Forest Park, and Vic, Juan, Tilly and Tony opted to come with us (well, technically, Tilly (being 11 months old) didn’t express a preference on her day’s activities).

The day was glorious (if a touch frosty), which may be the reason why each time I said ‘we can take this path to loop back’ the opinion that came back was that we should take the longer route.

It seems that I completely failed to take any meaningful photos of the day, but this snapshot (which fails to capture effectively the interesting mine workings which were the objective of the shot) does evidence the lovely blue sky:

The end result was that we overshot the intended 5 miles, eventually covering 8.25 miles. Vic gets a special mention for having carried Tilly the whole way – which was the equivalent of her having a full backpack on whilst the rest of us strolled along unladen.

Wednesday 9 February

On Tuesday’s walk we had passed pretty close to a couple of geocaches, so on Wednesday we decided to venture back through Sherwood Pines Forest Park to see if we could find them.

Leaving the Forest Park on the opposite side to the CenterParcs complex, we took to National Cycle Route No. 6, which follows a disused railway line. Urgh!  Whilst the Forest Park is perfectly nice, the cycle route wasn’t. There’s obviously been a problem in the past with vehicles getting access to that tarmacked route, with the attendant fly-tipping and burning out of (presumably stolen) vehicles. It seems that the vehicular access problem has now been solved, but that the path wasn’t cleared up first. So, the conditions on the route were either extraordinarily slippery (due to leaf cover combined with lack of use) or extraordinarily unattractive with piles of rubbish and strewn broken glass to negotiate.

We were only on the cycle route for a relatively short while, and having found the two caches (one of which was particularly tricky, making us rather pleased to have found it) we were soon back in the Forest Park and enjoying a pleasing walk through native trees as well as the pines.

The outing had seen us covering 9 miles, mainly under grey skies, but at least the rain held off.

Thursday 10 February

“I’m hoping that we’ll be able to trespass along this bit of track” I said, pointing at the map (a bit pointlessly as Mick didn’t have his specs on) “and get into the Country Park that way”. The plan was a very short (2.5-mile) circular walk, including a bit of Rufford Country Park.

My short trespass didn’t quite work out though, causing us to find ourselves furtively skirting the edges of fairways and greens, trying to work out how we could get off the golf course, across a water course and to where we needed to be. The answer turned out to be by walking an extra couple of miles.

It was a worthwhile extra couple of miles though, as we saw bits of the country park that we wouldn’t otherwise have seen, and a very pleasant place it seemed to be. When we find ourselves back at that CenterParcs again, we’ll give the place a better exploration – but on this occasion we had a lunch date to keep, so we were happy with the 4.5 miles we had covered and the two geocaches found.

Obviously my week for taking pretty crap photos! This is one of the mill buildings in the Country Park

And the view of the house taken from the ‘Broad Walk’ 

Friday 11 February

Shortly after arriving home from CenterParcs our next door neighbour popped around to say that his hedge-cutting man was coming around within the half hour to cut the hedgerows in the field at the end of the garden (we’re talking a tractor-hedge-cutter here, not a man with pair of hedge-trimmers). That meant it was advisable for me to move my car until he was done, and so it seemed sensible to park it just up the road, at the entrance to the estate, and take a stroll whilst the hedge-cutting was on-going.

Darkness was already falling as I set out, so it was just the shortest of my circuits, but better to stretch the legs than not, I thought.

Saturday 12 February

The downward trend in the length of our walks continued, but this time for a good reason as we introduced our 6-year old grand-daughter to the fun of geocaching in some local woods. Only a mile was covered on foot (five geocaches found), but grand-daughter loved it.

Sunday 13 February

An absolute mud-fest in a light drizzle ended the downward trend of walk length, as I took the ‘haute route’ to the supermarket. Not much else to say about it, really.

And so that wraps up last week…