Handbag Walking 2008, or two get lost on Skipwith Common

The handbag walking is still going well – we’re managing a walk pretty much every weekend. In the hectic milieu of last weekend, J and I managed to fit in a walk around Skipwith Common. We didn’t start the walk where the book told us to, choosing instead to start in the village (i.e. nearer to the pub), and that’s where the problems began.

To start with, Skipwith Common is pretty big. And it has lots of paths, that all look the same. And as usual we were talking a lot. All of this was a recipe for missing our turning, which we only realised when we reached ‘a crossing’ which was nothing like the description in the book. We turned down it anyway in an attempt to get our bearings. By this time, I was starting to wonder if I’d make it to Manchester that night, as I could still be walking over the Common.

As we emerged at the edge of the Common, we still couldn’t see any landmarks that would tell us where we were. We were mulling over what to do, probably looking a bit lost, when we were approached by a naturalist (yes, I did say naturalist) with a very long camera lens, who gave us directions back to the village, and told us to look out for slow worms(!). It did sound like we’d walked an awful lot further than we’d intended.

As we headed off, we both admitted that we hadn’t really listened to the directions, which had basically been to ‘follow the runway’*. Eventually we took a right turning, and realised that we were back on the path that we’d walked down. Some time later, we reached a crossing, and realised that this was the one we should have taken. Following the instructions to ‘delve into the trees’, we were very relieved to see the church across the fields and to follow the path back to the car.

*bizarrely, this bit of common ground must have been a wartime airfield, and there are still bits of tarmac in the middle of the wood.