Windswept Parlick.

This last week I was thwarted on my planned two day walk because I couldn’t face paying  a pub £60 B&B!  Anyway the weather was not brilliant.

I’ve had some recent conversation with Conrad, he of the long walks, over the miles one drives in relation to actual walking distance. [we used a lot of public transport on our recent Cheshire Ring Walk]  I’ve been guilty in the past of driving long distances to accomplish a relatively small walk. Whilst I was ‘Munroing’ this was often a problem with a mad dash up North in the car at a weekend. I partially overcame this by stringing together hills on long backpacking trips, having travelled there by rail. At the time [1978] I had just read Hamish Brown’s book on his continuous journey and was enthused to do likewise on a smaller scale.

I hate to think of the air miles I’ve covered to reach my backpacking jaunts on the continent, again I’ve mitigated those somewhat more recently by using the eurorail network when possible. Rock climbing trips usually meant a lot of [shared] driving. Looking back I could have used public transport far more. No one is perfect.

I’m lucky to be able to walk from my house into the Bowland area and now use my car as little as possible locally. As Saturday afternoon proved to be fairly bright and dry I  set off to walk through the fields to Chipping. Time was short so I did a linear walk and then caught the bus back. This made for an enjoyable few hours with time for a coffee in The Cobbled Corner Cafe in Chipping whilst waiting for the bus, money into the local economy. Of course the bus pass comes in handy, must use it more often!

Nothing much happened on the walk. A couple of Buzzards were watched for some time. I’ve avoided the cliched photos of frisking lambs and sparkling snowdrops. Instead there is a strange green corrugated shed, a rotting ?Bedford truck and a farmer’s unsightly silage pile.