It's amazing how quickly things change. Last weekend, my wife and I were conscious of not getting too close to other people we might pass, whereas this weekend we tried to do our walks where we wouldn't see anyone at all if possible - and that's been quite a challenge! The problem has been (and I've particularly noticed this on my weekday walks) is that there are many more people out and about than usual.
Yesterday, we decided to do a walk from home to our local woods and to get there by going across fields instead of by the main farm track we'd usually take.
As I mentioned a few days ago, there's no sign on the ground of the footpath across this field so it needs to be established...
As soon as we emerged onto a main track in the woods we could see lots more dog-walkers than usual, even for a Saturday. So we immediately took lesser-used (and occasionally very muddy) paths and managed to avoid passing anyone until the farm track leading back to the road.
We do things a bit differently on a Sunday morning. My wife runs and I walk briskly on a there-and-back route and we time our turnarounds so as to finish at the same time. I came up with a route that I hoped would be people-free! Basically, we would follow a cycle route along which I've walked several times before and never passed anyone...
We parked in a deserted car park. (That's my wife's new car, which she loves - her previous five were all Fiat 500s of varying kinds.)
We went along an extremely quiet road through the hamlet of Potten Street, which is somewhere between Herne Bay and Margate.
The lane on the other side of Potten Street. The land is reclaimed marshland so it's very flat here (which is why I chose it for my wife's run). The downside of this landscape is that it's very exposed and we ran/walked into a cold, brisk wind on the return leg.
This is the point where I turned back. The waterway is the Wantsum Channel, which separates the Isle of Thanet from mainland Kent.
On the way back, I took a selfie that makes me look very short!
The route was a success because neither of us passed a single walker or runner. Four individual cyclists passed us though, but that's less of a concern and probably only to be expected on a cycle route on a Sunday.
My wife had done several runs already this week, so today's outing was shorter than usual at just over 6/5 miles. Even so, my total for the week is a pleasing 81.3 miles.