To Crick

But not for the Crick Boat Show.  Daniel wanted a last walk through the English countryside before he heads to France next week.  It’s starting to get difficult finding a local circular route which includes some footpaths that aren’t already on the Open Street Map (OSM).  Eventually I identified a potential circuit which included Crick Village.  The route calculator described it as just over 20 kilometres and mostly flat.  I’d like a few hills but there aren’t many around here.

It rained cats and dogs for much of the walk.  Actually at one stage it looked like it was going to rain lions and elephants.  At least the rain was warm!   Daniel had treated his lightweight jacket with waterproofing compound late yesterday and consequently was forced to wear his heavyweight jacket which had him sweating profusely.  My lightweight jacket and leggings kept me dry along with the new Meindl boots.  Daniel couldn’t claim the same with his synthetic boots and has now decided he will also buy a pair of leather walking boots.

Because of the rain I elected not to take a good camera and instead relied on the 3.2MP in the gps.  It takes poor photos but at least provides proof we walked the circuit.

The footpath led us to this somewhat overgrown concrete bridge.  Walking out onto it and you discover it crosses the M1 motorway.

The rain just happened to cease when we were standing on the bridge.

The far side of the bridge was the only piece of high ground.  Probably why there were a number of wind turbines in the vicinity.  Daniel went off to photograph a wind turbine from beneath only to return and explain (unnecessarily) that they are huge when you’re close to them.

Told you the camera takes cr@p photos.

Daniel takes a photo of me taking the photo above!

About a kilometre from here there was a sign on the gate.  Actually it was the first of four signs we saw.  All bolted to the fence beside the gate.

This made us very cautious about the bovines in the paddocks.  The problem was they quickly spotted Daniel and charged across to get a closer look.  Meanwhile we both started to suffer from back ache.  All that bending over “Girl…Girl…Girl…Girl…Girl”  They were all girls!

“Daniel don’t go….. Don’t leave us!”

They thought he was being bashful hiding behind me when they charged across the field to get a closer look. 

“Hi Daniel… My name’s Penny!  Do you like my yellow earrings?”

We almost forgot to take a photo of the canal at Crick.  The following out of focus photo has been provided by Daniel to prove we actually made it.

I’m glad we decided not to go to the show this year.  It looks very wet and muddy underfoot!

The old fella was starting to tire on the return leg.  Where’s one of your sons when you need assistance?

Reach for it Tom.  You don’t want to fall backwards into that lot!

Hot, sweaty, and wet socks.  Almost a smile on his face!

We had to detour on the return journey as the road down to the radio transmitter building had a high closed gate with CCTV cameras.  Bugger!  My left foot was really starting to give me gip by the time we reached Waiouru.  Bloody silly of me to do such a long walk in new boots.