The other day, Paul, Kimber, and I reached the point of no return. We stood for a moment, wondering what to do. Well, I say we; to be fair Kimber contributed very little to either the standing or the wondering. She was too busy bouncing around in the heather.
You see we were up a hill. Not a particularly mountainous hill. And if I’m honest we had driven quite far up it. But it’s a proper hill with trees, and rocks, and a lot of heather. It also has three ‘woodland walks’ marked out for people like us, who like to walk up hills but can’t be bothered to use a map and compass. If this kind of walking were an App, it’d be ‘Hill Walking Lite’.
We were ostensibly following one of these ‘woodland walks’ at the time. Except we’d glanced at the map in the car park and set off rather carelessly in the direction we thought was the right one. I mean, we’ve done this kind of walking before: we know what we’re doing. Except that now we were lost.
We’d walked along what looked vaguely like a path for a while, until it ran out on us. Then we saw some poles heading up a steep slope, and despite the fact that they had no colour markings (we were ‘following’ the red one), we decided they must be showing someone the way to somewhere, so we reckoned we’d follow their path. A ‘path’ to nowhere as it turned out. But we knew from that three second glance at the map that we’d have to head up at some point, so we traversed the heather, feeling like proper hill walkers, until we reached the top of another point. Then we felt we might be too high and perhaps the path was along a bit and lower down. Well, I say we, but I have no sense of direction, so nobody with any sense would’ve been listening to my suggestions. And Kimber was too busy bouncing around in the heather, following rabbit scents, to be any use to anyone.
As it turned out, there was no path along a bit, and lower down. Or even along a bit more, through some trees, and lower down. And so we hit the point of no return. We could keep going, commit to our plan, determine to find the path we were supposed to be on. Or turn around and retrace our footsteps while we still had a vague idea of where they were. Now I’m known for tenacity, but not for stupidity. And neither, for sure, is my husband. So we retraced our footsteps.
When we reached the car park we returned to the map. Which is when we saw it. The sign post. Oops! So we followed it, and then the red markers, for an hour and a half. And had a great walk. With fabulous views. And not once did we catch a glimpse of the scene of our intrepid adventure.
Trackbacks/Pingbacks