This Week’s Walks
November 17th-23rd, 2024
Just like we do every year, we’re losing the battle against winter and it’s back creeping into our lives. There was a sudden cold snap last week, and we had some of the earliest snow I can remember here. Not drifts of it everywhere, but dropping down below freezing and a dusting of it on walls and rooftops is still a surprise for November, especially when it was within a week of me sitting on a beach on a surprisingly warm day. If it’s going to be cold, give me some time to acclimatise first, OK?
No trips in the van this week, but I did get some walking in, partly to get out there and document the snow in that time it lingered before the sun got it, or the rain and warm air of Storm Bert washed it away:
On Wednesday, while it was just cold, and the snow was elsewhere in the country, I did do a longer walk, heading down to Friday Woods again, this time walking through them from west to east, a reverse of my usual route through there. One of those crisp days with clear blue skies and the low sun shining through the trees, almost enough to distract from the task of navigating a clear path through mud and puddles.
So, not a week for great exploration but one I did keep moving through, even if part of that was on a treadmill at the gym when it felt just too cold and dark outside to go outside for a run. And then for my next run, I was up when it was cold, dark and rainy on Saturday morning to hop on a minibus with a group of friends to drive out to the middle of Hertfordshire for Panshanger parkrun. For a lot of them it was a chance to get their P for the parkrun alphabet, but as I’d got mine at Pavilion Gardens in Buxton a couple of months before, it was just a chance to tick off my 62nd location and discover another set of muddy fields. It’s a nice park, though, and probably a lovely run in the summer when it’s warm and dry.
Ah, warm and dry. Well, it’ll come back soon enough, right? Until then, I’ve been writing up some other thoughts from my walking in Norfolk last week:
Thanks for reading! If you enjoyed this post and would like to see more from me, you can buy me a coffee to help me out. If you’re a Medium member or subscriber, please clap and share this post so more people see it. You can follow me on Bluesky or on Mastodon at zirk.us and on other social media by following the links here.
