Embarras du choix

This almost obscenely large parade of boots is assembled outside Cowley Manor Hotel. Today's Wednesday walkers had met at nearby Cockleford - lunch at Cowley Manor is not for the short-pocketed - and on our way home, I requested a church photo-stop: St Mary's is bang next to the entrance to the mid-Nineteenth Century house, not so long ago converted into a luxury hotel with Sainsbury money.

It was the first walk I had had with the group on a really wet day - not cold, but unrelentingly damp. Making for the cover of a wood, we chose a path that turned out to be blocked by falling trees, and had to scramble steeply uphill, back out into the open. Our reward was to see a small herd of deer: they looked hard at us before scurrying away, outnumbered by five sodden ramblers.

Walking to Cockleford

Caroline has sadly opted out of our proposed French walking next month, so I embarked on a little training on my own this morning. Having caught the bus down to Shurdington, I set off a bit creakily up the Greenway Lane, following its line to Ullenwood, and thence through Barber Wood and over, amidst lambs and ewes, to Cowley. It's my favourite time of year, the chestnuts just bursting into leaf. Clouds scudded across a fitfully blue sky until I emerged from lunching in the Green Dragon: then darkness fell, and after some warning claps of thunder the hail descended: the A435 became suddenly white. This I took to be a hint that I should catch the bus back the five miles to Cheltenham.