Not having the best time health wise at the moment, feeling absolutely rubbish this morning, so either a day lying on settee or get some fresh air. Guess the lying on the settee wouldn’t be interesting on here! Have recently extended ‘walks from front door’ to all parts of the area, one footpath I’ve not been able to find is marked on map, ’Way of Love’, been along here a couple of times having never seen access from farmers track. So I’ll walk the other way round and see where I come out on this route. Met a friend suffering from effects of long covid, really concerned as her half pay is ending and still not feeling well enough to return to work. Next to where we were talking was the remnants of a brick wall lying all over the grass, some lad had borrowed his mams car for a 5am ride in the snow with his mates….
After heading through a local village came across a busy road, just couldn’t find a gap between traffic to cross, eventually making a dash for it, to the sound of car horns! Entering large farmers field, route was supposed to be straight across but was full of turnips, with no sign of where to cross. Noticed a few boot prints had headed down the left side of field so followed them, arrived at bottom of field, boot prints now turned right
Coming to end of turnip field, looking across to Durham.
Next challenge was coming across a fast flowing muddy stream, just that bit too wide to jump across, the far backside being above takeoff. An old tree trunk was lying across so followed a couple of boot prints to here, looked a bit dicey but here goes… made it, nay bother. Then around corner discovered not only a bridge, hiding behind a bush, but a pathway! Ah well next time!
Now then where to go, no sign of any track, just a lush grass field. Climbed up bank and could see a couple of horses in the distance, which I recognised from walking around the other way, so off towards edge of field looking out for anyway through to join track. Nothing found but barbed wire fence all around field, no way through, spotted a metal gate, climbed over. So no wiser to how this relatively new ‘Way of Love’ route goes through here. Back on familiar ground...
... headed back and of course entered the local mud from hell way!
Never met anyone until I reached the popular ‘Trod’, next to the Alpaca field. Back home feeling slightly better just absolutely shattered… a walk too far maybe! Oh that's now over 300 miles of walks from front door!