2010 . . . slip sliding away

Christmas is over and the snow's all gone . . . 2010 is fading into the fog as we slide into a new year . . . and a new decade!

Our end of year walk wasn't a crisp, frosty white one that makes the cheeks glow instead we had to be content with muddy tracks and puddles. Cliff is leading a walk for a local walking group at the end of February, so it's high time we got out there to reccy the route; this is an area between Cambridge and Saffron Walden which we haven't explored before by footpaths.

We set off into the melting distance down a Roman trackway.


Passing a burial mound, much reduced in height over millennia but still a mysterious presence in the misty landscape.


The hedgerows are still heavy with indigo sloes, clearly we're not on a Sloe Gin maker's patch!


Rose-hips splash the hedges with vivid red – do birds eat rose-hips?


On the edge of a little copse, a small orange teddy bear is perched in a tree – is he yours?


Along straight grassy tracks between fields of rape, the distance dissolves away.


Dipping down towards the dark woods that look like a back-drop for a pantomime – Little Red Riding Hood perhaps? or The Babes in the Wood?


There are deer in the woods; we've seen their track in the mud, heard twigs snap and the leafy woodland floor rustle. We have not seen them. They are watching us.


Our way back to the car has to be via a path over open arable fields, clay-rich mud, claggy, heavy on the boots and pulling on the leg muscles. Six and a half miles is more than enough for me – time to go home for tea!

However you see in 2011, have fun!

Happy New Year!

Celia
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