That 10 miles was actually 11 - as you can see I managed to forget to re-start tracking when we paused it briefly just north of Gilston Park!
Out via one of the old roads that criss-crosses the town - these pre-date the new town but have been retained as footpaths/cycle tracks, and make it very easy to get all over the town using very few busy roads, if you wish to do so.
Not long before we hit beautiful open countryside. Although this looks very flat it really isn’t - not the dramatic hills of some parts of the country out here in East Anglia but lovely gently rolling land, enabling some great views for quite a distance.
This produced a rueful smile from us both - passing place signs, so common in the Hebrides where we should be at the moment, are less often seen down here, and it felt quite appropriate to walk past this one today. Our ‘standard’ when we are up there is also to take a longer walk on the Sundays while we are there, without using the car, so some parallels to be drawn!
The wonderfully simple wild roses are out everywhere you look now - I can never resist the chance for another photo though!
The sky looking a little more dramatic now - although it didn’t rain we did wonder for a while whether it might. In fact it was near perfect walking weather - warm enough for short sleeves with a nice cooling breeze to stop things getting too hot.
Looking back across to Gilston Park. The public footpath runs straight past the big house - now divided into apartments we think - and judging by the glares we got from some of the residents sitting out having a socially distanced chat, people aren’t too happy about this! The park itself has a lot of massive houses - many dating back to the 1800’s and absolutely beautiful - very definitely a case of how the other half live!
This barley (we think!) field made a lovely soothing rustle as we walked through - you can also see from this how desperately dry the ground is after the past few months of almost entirely dry weather. Although we may prefer not to have rain, I think it’s fair to say that it’s actually now much needed.
Finally, back to the river before heading up through the town via the Town Park and home. Our only interaction with busy roads were an initial short distance along the former A11 early on, and then crossing the A414 close to the Eastwick junction on the way back - something which in normal times might have been more challenging than it was on this occasion. A glorious afternoon’s walking!
The big national news today was that the Prime Minister’s political advisor Dominic Cummings has admitted to leaving his home during the lockdown to drive his child 260 miles to stay with family after his wife showed Coronavirus symptoms. Most are understandably outraged by this - while the rest of us for the most part followed the guidelines that the government had set, to find out that one of its “inner circle” had disregarded them blatantly does feel like quite a kick in the teeth, I think. I’m in no doubt that further details will emerge over the next few days but at the moment Cummings is refusing to resign and is being backed by the PM - it will be interesting to see how that pans out.
Robyn
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