First walk from the book

 Nick had given me a book with Shropshire walks for my birthday. I figured we would have a lot of fun with that! And I was soon right.

I had intended to see him the week before my birthday, but storm Darragh got in the way. So I moved my train ticket to the week after my birthday. A bit close to Christmas but so be it! And it would be good but gusty weather so we could do the first walk. I had picked one around Myddle, not far from where he lives. 

The Red Lion, where the walk starts and ends 

We started around noon. It was fine weather! And Shropshire is very pretty. There was a fair amount of sloshing through wet fields. There mud splatters on my trousers came up to crotch height! But that’s ok. 

Scenic bridge

Walk selfie

View from a ridge

At some point, the route went through a copse. It was cross-cut with mountain bike trails. The book was a bit vague here: ‘keeping ahead and right at each fork’. That should lead us down to a garden edge where we were instructed to go right onto the road. Well! We made our way through, and ended up on a road by the corner of a garden. And turned right on that road, as instructed. 

By then Nick was keen to cut the route short. He has to be careful with his back, and was also eager to get back to his son. That was fine; we could forget about the public footpaths and just walk back over the road. But then we realised we already were on that road. We had come out of the copse too far to the north, and had accidentally already taken the shortcut! So bad navigation, good outcome. And we can just come back one day to do the loop we now left out. 

Hopefully, Nick’s back will keep improving, and maybe we can at some point do entire loops, including the longer ones! But even like this we had a good time. It was a fab present!