Report on Thursday 6th January walk

[vanda boyd]

A small select group of 6 of us gathered on a slightly frosty morning in Millthorpe, to start this clockwise walk heading initially uphill, to then take a traversing path to Cartledge, with its lovely house with interesting stone gutter projections, before turning south down the long bridle track, leaving it near the bottom, to then follow obvious paths through fields and across minor roads. Both the coffee and lunch stop were enjoyed in warm sunshine, despite seeing occasional puddles with ice on and persistent frost in shaded areas. We navigated safely through Rumbling Street, Barlow Grange and Moorhall, enjoying the stunning views north across the Millthorpe valley to Holmesfield and Owler Bar. We encountered more donkeys and over-friendly horses on the walk today than other human beings, and certainly some of us were quite glad to have a substantial hedge between us and two particularly excitable and frisky horses. The only slight navigational error of the day was missing the obvious path going diagonally across a field, but the stile was soon spotted, and we were soon back on track. But then shortly afterwards, feeling slightly guilty, we had to walk over a field of newly sprouting ?wheat, but after checking the map several times, it was obvious the farmer had removed any sign of the footpath by ploughing and planting over it [and the footpath sign on the road was also unhelpfully pointing in the wrong direction]. The remainder of the walk was just an easy straightforward stroll down the road through Unthank, across a few fields to the useful ford [for our particularly very muddy boots] and back to our cars in Millthorpe. As planned, the walk was a GPS measured 7 miles long.
Thank you as ever for your good company. Vanda Boyd

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