An Unexpected Day

When I heard Simon coming down the stairs at 9 am this morning, I knew the phone call he had taken must be for me.  I wracked my brains to think who on earth would be calling me at this time, or who would even know I was at home today, but came up blank. 

It was Kathryn!  What a lovely surprise!  We'd been meeting up whilst I had my break from work to do a bit of walking and lunching, but stopped once the summer holidays kicked in as we both had family responsibilities instead.   Turns out she'd bumped into Becky last night who told her that my hours had changed and I was at home this week.

I thought about her last week and meant to get in touch.  Now that the kids are back at school we really should take up where we left off rather then let things slide. I thought about her again on waking this morning, but once out of bed had forgotten again, so was really pleased when she rang.

As the weather was nice we decided to go for a walk.  I emphasised I only wanted a short, hour-long walk, as my brain wasn't really into walking mode at all.  She said that was fine, and we decided to do a 3 mile stretch of the Dronfield Rotary Walk. 

I got to her house about 11 and we climbed up Green Lane to  Coal Aston.  Weather wise it was perfect. We wandered around the route for a bit then rather than take the short cut home decided to go a bit further.  We ended up at The Inn at Troway just before half 12 and had a well deserved beer and a snack.

An hour later, after much nattering and giggling we thought we'd better continue on our way, as we'd only done about half of the walk at this point.

We crossed the road into the field with the airstrip opposite The Inn and headed off down towards the stye at the bottom of the field.  There was a huge herd of cows around the style so we stopped a little way from them.  I don't usually mind walking past cows - I don't usually feel too nervous but we were mindful that they had calfs with them, which they can be very protective of, and I just felt that it wasn't a good idea to continue on that way.

We walked around the field looking for another way around without having to retrace our footsteps, but couldn't find another public right of way so resigned ourselves to the fact that we'd have to walk along the road.  We decided that if it was a toss up between being mauled by a cow or mown down by a passing motorist  we'd take our chances on the road.

Whilst making our way back to the edge of the field we saw a couple of farmers in tractors.

The first stopped and asked if we were lost.  We explained what had happened and he told us just to continue on through the herd of cows because they were really docile and the calfs weren't so young.  So off we set, very happy to be back on track once again.

The second farmer drew level with us, and stopped us, asking us what the problem was.  So once again, we explained what we were doing and he said: 'I'm the gaffer here, don't listen to him.  There's two bulls in that herd of cows, you (pointing to Kathryn) you're wearing a red anorak, I wouldn't like your chances'.  He showed us another way out of the field without having to retrace our steps so we managed to get on our way.

It took us the long way round - right through the middle of Apperknowle (see map), and must have added about 45 minutes to that part of the walk, but we were having a good laugh at the conflicting advice and didn't really notice the time.

A bit further on we came across another field of cows that we needed to cross, but got some advice from a rather nice and handsome woodcutter that 'I wouldn't go in that field if Iwere you, there's all sorts in there'.  So we erred on the side of caution once again and kept to the road for that bit.

I eventually rolled up at home at 3.00pm, so much for a short walk, but I thoroughly enjoyed the day and it was really good to catch up with Kathryn.