Tough Walking.

You wouldn’t think that walking in the gently rolling English countryside could be difficult, would you? Well, it can.

Today I tried a public footpath that I haven't used before. (In Britain these are imaginary lines on the ground, dictated by centuries of use; there’s no actual ‘path’ as such.) It’s one that isn’t usually available because the first field it crosses often has a dairy herd in there and a bull running with them. Today it was empty, so off I went.

The first field was easy. The next section through a narrow wood was a bit more difficult because of the untrodden undergrowth, but not enough to break my pace. The real problem came when the path crossed another stile into a wheat field. The path runs along the edge of the field, and being this time of year it was well overgrown with stuff spilling out of the hedgerow – brambles, thorns, belts of sticky goose grass, and so on. Every step had something trying to trip me up, wrap itself around me or scratch my neck or face. It was the sort of stuff that had to be forced through. I even got a thorn deep in my finger that had to be cut out later. And beneath all the overgrowth was unseen and uneven ground on which it would have been easy to turn an ankle. Walking through the wheat wasn’t a responsible option since it would have risked damaging the crop.

Can you believe that it took half an hour to walk about 100yds? That’s far longer than it takes to walk the same distance on the most rugged terrain in hill country.