For this weekend’s 10km outing, we decided to go straight from the door to Clowes Wood - our local woods.
There are two paths that we can take to Clowes Wood. There’s the Crab & Winkle Way cycle path, which is nice and gravelly and runs from Whitstable in the north to Canterbury in the south. And then there’s the footpath from Bogshole Lane that crosses four fields before reaching the woods.
The latter is usually preferable for several reasons, including that it rises to a few hundred feet and provides fantastic views, but mainly because I’ve never yet seen another person on that path…
However, for much of the year there are cows in the first field, that tend to congregate around the gate. And that means that we then continue along Bogshole Lane and take the long way round to the woods. So basically, it’s simpler to forget about the fields route until the cows go inside again.
One thing I like about the autumn is the cows disappearing from fields. There are three herds near us and they’ve all gone in now - including this lot…
At this point I have to mention that my wife really doesn’t like wet mud. As in really, really, really doesn’t like it!
I didn’t fancy the detour so we set off across the first field. It didn’t look too bad, but it was like a very shallow lake covered with grass.
The second field was just as wet, except there wasn’t any grass and there was a bit more sloppy mud:
Progress was slow! I got to the third field quite quickly by sort-of skipping across the sloppy stuff, then I waited a while. The third field is quite steep and I didn’t get a photo because we were walking into the sun, which was just over the brow of the hill. Being sloped, you might think the third field would be drier, but it wasn’t.
We passed the farm buildings (visible on the map) and crossed the last field before the woods. Here the path was under water. This is where I mention that we were both wearing non-waterproof trail-running shoes!
Finally we were there and we set off along some of our favourite trails through the woods. Twisty, turny, ups and downs and absolutely fantastic. And although we spotted some people on the main tracks, we had our trails completely to ourselves.
We missed a turn somewhere along the way (the route was in my head!) and we knew that a very short extension would be needed before we got home if we were to do the desired 10km/6.2miles, so we turned down this road where I used to live about 15 years ago…
There weren’t nearly as many houses back then - and the residents all contributed to the upkeep of the road. This morning it was a river!