The Road goes ever on and on; Down from the door where it began;
Now far ahead the Road has gone; And I must follow, if I can;
Pursuing it with eager feet; Until it joins some larger way;
Where many paths and errands met; And whither then? I cannot say.

[JRR Tolkien, Lord of the Rings]

Sunday 22 November 2015

A Visit to the Smallest County (4)

Saturday 21 November

Rutland Water is a sizeable body of water and, whilst in summer we wouldn’t think anything of walking its outside perimeter in a day, there was still enough left on this trip to keep us amused for another morning’s walking, with today’s objective being the reservoir’s tongue: Hambleton peninsula.

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In view of the weather (glorious blue skies, but with a very keen wind which had switched from warm to deep-mid-winter overnight) I ditched plans to walk in from Egleton and instead we sought somewhere to park on the peninsula itself. Being early enough easily to find a parking spot, we had plenty of time at our disposal to fortify ourselves with coffee and bacon/egg sandwiches before we stepped out into the wind.

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If the wind had been a bit less and the temperature a bit more it would have been a most perfect walking day, but even so, we can’t really complain about such conditions at this time of year, can we?

With just a handful of runners and cyclists seen, and various scientific experiments carried out as to our respective stride lengths, we found ourselves back at a busier village than we’d left, having ambled a modest 4.5 miles.

And that would have been the end of our trip, except that I’d spotted that Bardon Hill lay just a stone’s throw away from a sensible route home, and as it had been pea-soup weather when I made it the first hill of my Marilyn campaign on 18 November 2014, and as Mick hadn’t been with me that day, we made a little detour.

The weather forecast on Friday evening had told us of the possibility of a bit of slush lying on Saturday morning in the Midlands, but promised that it would soon thaw, so I hadn’t expected, as we approached Coalville, to see crisp snow in the streets in the middle of the afternoon. We explored those streets a bit more than intended too, having set out from Colin in completely the wrong direction … ooops.

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The views were superb from the top, but the wind chill such that we paused only long enough to prove that I really need to work on my selfie composition skills:IMG_0458

3 comments:

  1. That is such a typical Mick pose. Love it!

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  2. Blimey. My old stamping ground.
    You should have had lunch at Hambledon Hall - best restaurant around for miles!
    Rutland Water is a god-awful windblown place in the winter. Miss Whiplash has dragged Phil & me around it a few times. Ghastly. Horrible.
    I would have stayed in the nice comfy hotel. A much better idea.
    You'll peak too soon, you know...
    :-)

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  3. Just caught up with all this. Been a bit busy myself (2 more Marilyns). This post sounds more cheerful than the previous three. You seem to have been covering ground I have walked on my Viking Way and Macmillan Way no 1. I stayed in Stamford and walked down that path in your photo, and I have a photo of that Roman ford notice, and I have walked both north an south shore of Rutland Water, but not the tongue.

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