Walking

After a particularly busy week it was good to get Nordic walking today, but before I tell you about that I must mention our History group meeting yesterday.

I am Treasurer of the History group of my local U3A and we had our first indoor meeting after a summer visiting Stately Homes etc.  The visit to Blenheim Palace was one (my last post). The group has grown from about 30 when we started to 130 and so we moved to a larger venue and this was the first meeting in the hall.  I talked about the group's final accounts for the previous year, we had a discussion about group issues and then I was going to give a presentation using PowerPoint through the hall's own visual system.  We couldn't get it to work and I suddenly realised that I would have to "wing it" - I love that expression as it says it all.  I had none of the photos that had been taken specially for the talk, only me trying to be cheerful and feeling like an actor who has no lines but must keep the show going.  I couldn't see anyone falling asleep and I got a few laughs so it can't have been all bad, but by the time I got home I was exhausted.

So this morning's walk was a real tonic.  It started from the Kings Head pub in Wadenhoe where lunch was booked and we walked around the village ...

A very small doorway!!

The dovecote

 ... visiting the medieval dovecote and then down to the river over the first bridge.  

Ford and Mill in the background

At this point the River Nene is shallow and is easily fordable but we didn't fancy getting out feet wet.  That would happen later in the very damp grass even though our boots were waterproof.  We couldn't understand that at all.

Spiders webs in the bushes

 Still being arty with my new camera and I couldn't resist the webs.  Lovely with the light rain on them.

Loved this sign

This sign was in Achurch and the farm buildings are for sale for development if you have about £1 million!!

Horse trough in front.

 This is the elaborate cover for the village well at Achurch.  The river meanwhile, meanders through the meadows and in total we crossed it four times, there and back.

Crossing the River Nene again.

Please note that most of us were in short sleeves because though we started in drizzle by this time it was warm, muggy and misty.  So finally we headed back to the pub for a very convivial lunch.  A lovely walk through some of the beautiful villages of Northamptonshire and hardly anything mentioned about the result of the Scottish vote last night!!!!  

A Postscript for my readers abroad - Scotland which has been a member of the UNITED Kingdom for over 300 years, wanted to break away and form their own independent country, thus breaking up the union.  They held a referendum to see whether the people wanted this to happen and the vote was Yes - 45%, No - 55% so it is still the United Kingdom and hopefully that is the way it will remain, certainly in my lifetime.  If you want to know more go here.

Thankfully, a quiet weekend ahead with plenty of time for sewing!

Postscript for all - I have discovered that if you double click on the photos they come up on the screen bigger - at least they do for me; so you can see my arty spiders webs even better!!