I went out for my daily constitutional this afternoon (that would be a walk, I've not run out of loo roll yet) and decided to spice things up a bit with a little trespass around a field up for sale with planning permission for a new housing development
I hope nobody buys it as it's the local barn owl's stomping ground. I quickly discovered it's also home to a couple of young deer. Social distancing wasn't a problem for this chap:
Further round the field I discovered a little bridge:
... which solved the mystery of whether or not there is "through" access to another lane I've not yet explored.
Escaping unscathed and undiscovered from my little trespass, I did a bit of pavement plodding, passing a dog walker at the required 2 metre minimum and saying that apologetic "hello". Quite an easy task really because I got side-tracked by this:
The washing machine door has been in the fence for a number of years now and usually has some fish in it (pretend ones, not real ones) though there was once a photograph of a scrunched up face in there as if someone was trying to get out. Shame on them for having a sense of humour.
I wandered round the corner and onto Mattocks Lane. A fair few years ago the residents of the (then) new houses, applied for the road to be classed as a private driveway - access only to their houses / no public access (it used to be a public right of way back in the year dot) so, because the council were no longer maintaining it, they stopped the bin collections from their doors (as they don't go up driveways) and requested the residents brought their bins to the junction with the main road. Twenty years later and the right of way has been reinstated and the council collect from up the lane again. I guess nobody thought that one through at the time
Mattocks lane (from halfway up):
... it's a very long lane.
Finally, I was out into the open countryside (ish):
Just round the corner then I could see miles and miles of fields and it gladdened my heart to hear skylarks. I did take a photograph of the view but it just looks like a brown stripe (the fields) and a blue stripe (the sky) and was even less interesting than the rest of my pics
I reached the junction with the farm road and headed across it and up along the wrong side of the drainage ditch to the little bridge, which I crossed, and went back down the other side:
To continue on would have meant I would have to do a mile or so of road walking on what is quite a busy road with no verges... although now is probably the best time to do that!
Returning back to the farm track (technically another trespass) I meandered past the flotsam and jetsam of farm equipment and ... well... a pungent pile of crap (to put it bluntly). Sorry, no photograph of that.
Neither did I take a photograph of the random duck that flew past, or the two swans that looked like they were heading to the secret lake (but that's a trespass for another day).
All too soon I was at the main back road into town so embarked on yet another trespass through the apple orchard. Normally I just walk along the field edge until the other tractor exit and get back onto the road but, no, this time I decided to walk round the edge of the orchard/hay meadow instead.... A bit of a recce to see if there was a sneaky access onto the railtrack (disused) from here. No, there isn't. So I did circuit, returning back through the orchard:
It's a pity they've planted them so uniformly. If it was me, I'd have gone random and created a little meandering trail through. But it's not me, and they haven't. Not that I should have been walking there in the first place.
Back on the main road again I spotted an absolutely cracking display of daffodils on the other side of the road and I think this is the first time I've just been able to cross without having to wait for a gap in the traffic:
My legs didn't feel like they'd done enough walking yet so I turned onto the old railway track:
... and spent the next 10 minutes actively avoiding other people. I have genuinely never seen so many people out along here as I did today. To be honest, everyone I passed was really quite good-humoured about the whole social distancing thing, unlike me who just shouted "GET OUT OF MY PERSONAL SPACE YOU MORON" whilst delivering a Death-Stare and shaking my fist. Which isn't really that threatening because I only have small hands.
All too soon I was onto the playing field and back to civilisation again.
My legs still didn't feel done but I'd run out of walk. I'm quite impressed really because it turns out I'd walked 4 miles without even realising.
Anyhow, if you haven't nodded off yet, thanks for reading
Oh, and the heading? It's "Confessions of a Trespasser"...which obviously you realised...right?