What’s that noise?
It’s week 20 of my 52 Ways to Walk crusade. 20 weeks of the year gone just like that. I’m still walking locally and plan to revisit some paths I’ve not used of late. At the same time, I will try out Sing as you Stride. My singing is worse than my dancing, which I attempted a couple of weeks ago, so I’m hoping these paths are little used, and that I don’t meet anybody.
The book states, “Singing whilst walking has been used throughout history – by marching soldiers, hiking schoolchildren, dissenting protestors, and weary families.” Singing helps maintain a good tempo and takes your mind off background stress. I recognise some of that.
Thoughts of tunes from my recent musical Virtual Walking post come to mind. The ones with a marching tempo, unsurprisingly, worked best. However, other thoughts bring out different tunes. The sight of rabbits has me dragging from my memory “Run rabbit, Run rabbit, run, run, run. Don’t let the farmer get his gun, gun, gun”
I am lucky to live on the edge of the countryside. This afternoon, the hawthorne’s aroma fills the air, I am one of those who find it pleasant. An almost hidden stile leads into the fields. Not many people use these field paths, and in their isolation, I see hares and roe deer when I’m not singing. A cuckoo is heard, as is a woodpecker. Swallows are flying around, and a ‘blue’ butterfly flutters, apparently aimlessly, above the long grass. All very satisfying.
I cross and recross Westfield Brook several times as I wander on. The day is made for singing.
I come out onto a lane and almost immediately take a path I’ve not used for years, and I’m pleasantly surprised by all the young trees planted then and how they have grown in that time. 
Around the corner, I was hoping for a brew at friends’, but not unexpectedly, they are out enjoying the weather. I vary the route home by cutting through the small industrial estate at Sandbanks and then, reluctant to follow the busy main road, extend my walk across the other side into fields and then through a wood yard where roof trusses are fabricated. There is a way out at the far end if you look carefully.
Little does one know of this manufacturer on the outskirts of town.
Then you are back in the fields, cut ready for silaging, haymaking is a thing of the past. Green lanes bring me back into Longridge, where I successfully navigate one of the extensive new housing estates to home. 
The singing has ceased by now!
I’m with you on the smell of hawthorn BC, I love it. I just wish some enterprising perfume manufacturer could recreate it, I’d buy bottles of it. An interesting little video, and I love the sheep and lambs.
The Darling Buds of May. Some people associate it with death.
A most interesting post. The map led me to Google which confirmed my thought that the many reservoirs served Preston and also to your 2020 post of a walk around the reservoirs. I quickly got sidetracked by some of your lockdown posts and was brought back to the present day by your purchase of a litter picker. My husband and I joined a local litter picking group in 2021 for much the same reason and continue to litter pick and report fly tips which seem to be an ongoing problem. Our local council, Ealing, supports the group by providing our pickers and bags. Yesterday we filled 3 large blue bags from a local small wood which seemed relatively tidy apart from a small stash of clothing.
You have been busy – reading and litter picking. There is something very satisfying about litter picking. I’m sure that on the patches I visit, there is less rubbish generally over time.
I do love this time of year with the hawthorn and the cow parsley in blossom.
The hedgerows are full of cow parsley, which we take for granted compared to more showy flowers.