A walking day...

Just seven months and three days since we last went there, three of us and the dog took a hike to Bolton Abbey Strid Woods again yesterday and whilst the weather wasn't a lot different to the last time (New Years Eve) it was a lot more humid.

As we set off a light mist of a rain started to fall, the sort of rain that you don't even notice because its so fine, it just seems to hang around in the air like a thin and damp gauze in front of your face but after you walked half a mile you realise that your soaked.

Unfortunately I'd dressed for colder wetter weather and with a t-shirt and sweatshirt already on and now wet I had to concede to the elements and don the waterproof jacket - it wasn't so much raining as the humidity was visible in the air and it soon got very warm inside the clothing.

Its a nice walk, a couple of miles up one side of the river, cross at an aquaduct and then back down the other side, the river still being in almost full spate after the recent deluges and looking back at the photos that I took in December last year, which may or may not appear as if by magic when you click this bit, it wasn't hugely different other than the leaves on the trees yesterday - from recollection it was a warm wet day in December too, our British micro climate does not really distinguish too much between the seasons anymore.

A presumed victim of the recent floods spotted by Jodie laying in the shallows of a branch tributory of the main river, a small dead deer washed up on a shingle branch, and all along the pathway a nice new addition to the wooded walk - sculptures in metal and wood every quarter mile or so hidden in the trees, some already damaged and vandalised - who does that sort of thing, this place is well out of the reach of your townie vandals, its not the haunt of teenage gangs, its a place where families and old fogies go for a gentle five mile walk along a wooded river - which one of those groups of people sees a sculpture along the way and decides that they have an overwhelming need to damage it ? Fuckwits.


At the end of it all we had a tired, wet old dog who, if popular folklore is to be believed, is around 63 years old now in dog years, I don't believe a word of it as at nine years old Jake still looks and behaves like a puppy to me, still can hear a chocolate biscuit being unwrapped from three rooms away, and still whines with excitement every time we get his lead and harness out for a walk like yesterday.