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]

Wednesday 9 December 2009

Long Mynd Return (Thursday 19 November 2009)

(I wrote this during our holiday in Ludlow, on 19 November, immediately after the walk in question. I then had a few technical issues and couldn’t post it. In the absence of anything more recent to report, I thought that I would post it now. Rumour has it that there will be some more walking done this weekend. Watch this space!)

We liked the Long Mynd so much during our walk there on Monday that we decided to return today, but this time ascending via Ashes Hollow from Little Stretton and returning via somewhere further south.

Ashes Hollow was lovely, but even at the top the wind strength wasn’t anywhere nearly as strong as forecast (35 gusting 50). There were a couple of times that we got blown off the path on the way up but seldom did we have to battle with the wind.

Once at the top we had a decision: south and no guarantee of a tea room, or north to Cardingmill Valley where we knew there to be not only a tea room but one serving excellent cake.

It’s always the way when you spend a good period fantasising about what you will order in the tea room: the tea room will be closed. And so it turned out to be.

So, instead we walked into Church Stretton where only one establishment had any customers and having opted to join them all we couldn’t work out why it was so well frequented.

Some truly lovely woodland was sampled on the way back to Little Stretton (and for some reason Mick believed me when I said ‘it’s flat the whole way back’; he ought to know by now that when I say such things what I mean is ‘I’ve not looked at the contours’).

The highlight of the walk for Mick was when he heard a small yelp behind him and turned to find me sprawled in a mud-bath. A leg had shot out from under me and a considerable amount of mud had migrated from the ground onto my trousers. We were before Cardingmill Valley at the time and a cafe was in the forefront of my mind. Trousers an inch thick with mud on the seat don’t really go well with being seen in public eateries, and the only solution seemed to be to go and sit in a stream, so that’s what I did.

I can’t say that it was the most pleasant experience of my life, but the Paramo trousers did their job with drying out quickly, and before we made it to a tea-serving establishment I took a detour via an outdoor shop to buy some Tech-Wash so that I can be restored to completely clean trousers for the morrow.

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1 comment:

  1. My journalist brother keeps telling me to take photos of the unfortunate happenings or their subjects or objects which he says are always more interesting for the recipient. I keep striving to do this, but continually fail so I forgive you here, but a photo of you sitting in the stream would have been quite entertaining.

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