Pages

9 January 2021 (Saturday) - Hothfield Bogs & Common

I woke to the sound of Sid’s frantic barking and my heart sank. I know what he is like. When the other dogs need a tiddle they woof once and stand by the back door. Sid yaps constantly until someone comes to sort him out at which point he gets very over-excited, starts running in pissed circles, drops turds and treads in them. Getting to him before the turds emerge is just too ambitious but grabbing him before he dances through the turds can be done. I led him (by the scruff of his neck) outside where he tiddled whilst I went back inside and cleared up the poop.

 

He then sat next to me on the sofa, snoring loudly, whilst I scoffed toast and peered into the Internet. There was joy and resentment being expressed on Facebook as The Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs “has now officially confirmed that angling/fishing (including sea fishing off private boats) can be considered exercise and are hence permitted.”. The joy was from my fishing friends. The resentment was from my golfing friends as golf is still a big no-no during the ongoing lock-down.

There hasn’t been any sense at all in any of the lock-down rules, has there? When you go fishing you walk maybe a hundred yards and then sit on your arse all day long. When you play golf you walk several miles. The one which involves sitting on your arse is supposedly “exercise”. Go figure. Mind you this is from the same government that is giving out the wrong post code for the Brexit lorry park.

 

Fudge was a worry over brekkie; having turned down two bowls of dog food and a bowl of biscuits we finally got him to eat by presenting him with a bowl of dry Cheerios. He’s a fussy pup. He was also a sulky pup when I insisted he wore a coat on our walk.
Pausing only briefly to drop the "er indoors TM"-mobile at the garage we drove out to Hothfield for today’s walk. Usually we’d have a decent weekend walk with friends, but what with lockdown that wasn’t really possible. Certainly not with the way I tell the world what we get up to. Mind you I wonder if geocaching is more akin to fishing or golf? Is it allowed or is it banned? The official rules say that exercise is allowed but recreation is a no-no. So… today we walked the dogs and used a few geocaches to guide our way. That’s exercise (!)

The route we followed was interesting. It followed footpaths up to Hothfield Common Nature Reserve, went through the reserve, and then followed footpaths up to Little Chart Forstall where we turned round and came back. The part of the walk through the nature reserve was heaving with normal people, the parts on the footpaths were deserted. Which is why I like the walks we do at the non-lockdown weekends – we get to avoid the normal people.

As we walked Pogo tried to pick a fight with some Highland cattle. I wish he wouldn’t. We also found a Christmas sock hanging of a fence. How on Earth does anyone lose a sock at this time of year?

I took quite a few photos of our walk today.

 

We came home, and once the dogs had been seriously bathed we all had a lazy afternoon. The dogs snored on the sofa and we started at the telly.

We binge-watched Back to Life on Netflix. It is a rather good TV show about a woman’s return to the family home after having spent twenty years in prison. The thing was set in Hythe, and featured a lot of places where I’ve been, including the sound mirror on the White Cliffs. It was just a shame that places ten miles apart are shown as being within walking distance. But it stars Daisy Haggard. Woof!

We then watched the last episode of the current series of Star Trek: Discovery. It was OK I suppose… It really doesn’t help that each week I can’t remember what happened in the previous episode; I think I might need to go right back to the start of Star Trek: Discovery and watch the lot in quick succession.

And we then started watching “Bridgerton”. I’ve heard so much about this show; being a period drama I thought I’d love it… I struggled to stay awake.

No comments:

Post a Comment