Eleven walking stalwarts gathered at the very civilised time of 11am in the centre of Millthorpe for this New Year’s Day walk. Another walking group seemed happy to shuffle their own cars closer, so that all the Castle cars could also be fitted into this conveniently situated layby. Then off we set, heading uphill towards Holmesfield before taking a traversing path southwest to Unthank . As usual the walk had not been recced [?spelling] so the map was checked fairly regularly by the meet leader when she didn’t recognise the field/path/stile/stream, having not led a walk here since last March. A coffee stop was taken in Meekfield Wood, and later on, having passed through Moorhall we had lunch, sheltering out of the cold wind behind a thick band of trees. Two decided to have a shorter walk and peel off at Barlow Grange. The rest of us continued up to the highest point of the walk near Grange Hill, with disappointingly minimal views today, before heading down out of the wind now, through Oxton Rakes. There was no sign of the two peacocks that lived here, but several friendly dogs seemed to want to join us on our walk. An unfamiliar path was safely navigated, and another stretch of road taken, before we were back on very familiar territory, passing through Rumbling Street northwards back towards Millthorpe. Noteworthy aspects of the day were repeated appearances of a police car [? the same one], numerous horses, some with winter coats and stylishly plaited tails [!] and much MUD in all its different forms. Slightly disappointing on the entertainment front was that no-one fell over in it, but there was a general agreement that the bar has now been set particularly high for the rest of the year for measuring the ‘mud-ness factor’ on future walks. The meet lead’s suggestion of being awarded bonus points for providing TWO fords for boot washing just before the walk ended, disappointingly didn’t go down as well as she’d hoped for.
But as usual thank you all for your company, especially the workers amongst you that we don’t see so often [Leon, Josie and Rosa] and also Alice from the Brecon Beacons in Wales, staying in Sheffield, whilst waiting to become a grandmother for the first time, who’d heard about the Castle through Dave Crowther.
According to Andy’s GPS we walked 7 and 1/2 miles.
Vanda Boyd
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