
This Sunday we had a birthday to celebrate.
It began with lunch in the Watership Down Inn. Golden fish and chips, or delicious roast beef with Yorkshire puddings as puffed up as clouds, followed by irresistible variations on icecream and cake. Then out we headed into the winter grey for a walk.
Mud, slimy as sludge, clung to our boots from start to finish, but we didn’t mind the sliding, and we took no notice of the weather as it came and went, wiping over us like a damp cloth. We were celebrating, and it was beautiful.
Freshly planted fields, covered in flint, stretched up the hill to one side, while a chalk stream ran through trees in the valley below. There were a few other walkers, and dogs, but, for most of the way, it was just us, and the bridges we crossed and the mills we passed.
There was a rope swing – two in our party pirouetted lopsidedly – but mostly we just wound on, talking, and talking, past the swans, the ducks, the snowdrops and the trout, to arrive back at the old silk mill in time for tea.
A good Sunday!
Copyright Georgie Knaggs & The Phraser 2023