I don’t know whether it was my confession earlier this week on Facebook about getting lost on my recce for the walk, or it’s relative ease and proximity to Worcester, but the turn out was good. Twenty three friends and three dogs met at a car park near Speech House for a walk that nobody really knew where it would take them. The fact that many of the group visited any number of car parks in the vicinity before finding the right one did not bode well. It was lovely to see so many and the conversations never abated throughout. I guess that was largely due to the fairly relaxed pace I set and that, in general it was easy walking.
It was surprising how wet some of the trails were considering how little rain we have had during the autumn. Many of them had been made worse by the damage caused by rummaging wild boar. Huge areas of turf have been turned over in their search for food. This is becoming a real problem in the area as these animals have not confined themselves to the forest but have ventured further afield, into gardens and turned over much loved lawns. I would not enjoy walking these trails during or after a particularly wet spell. The dogs enjoyed it, immersing themselves into deep pools of clay laden water. The fear for the humans was where will the dogs shake when they climb out of the pools.
If I am honest, half an hour into the walk, I was struggling a little with the navigation. What was on the map did not always relate to what was on the ground. Even using a large scale leaflet from the forestry commission failed to give me confidence after a while, when the map did not correspond to what was on the ground. I have never resorted to Google Maps before, always preferring to rely on a “proper” map and my own navigational skills to see me through. It was made more difficult by the fact that there was no sun at all and a sense of direction in the trees was lost. I decided to check Google Maps to see if it could pinpoint our position and I could marry that with what the printed map was showing me. What a difference that made, once I had married the detail on the phone with that on the map. From them on it didn’t matter where we went as I always had the opportunity to double check.
The trees were at their autumnal best, particularly the beech trees whose leaves were a rich coppery colour. If only the sun had shone. It was in a little glade of beech trees that we took lunch. It could not have come soon enough. I wasn’t the only one starving. The change in the hour meant that we were all really looking forward to lunch by about 11.30. We managed to hold off until the proper time. Normally at this time of year it is too cold to linger long over lunch, but today, the 30th of October, it was very pleasantly mild and we were able to relax, enjoy our lunch, without the fear of becoming chilled. If only the sun had shone.
My aim was to reach Beechenhurst by about 3.00 for a cup of tea and a cake. This would leave with just one kilometre back to the car park. As we dropped down through the trees to the very popular activity area and cafe, we realised the group was a little short on numbers. We were missing five. How? For once I had no signal to phone them and, because I had been using my phone for map referencing, I hardly had any battery left. I wasn’t worried, and in any case, a loss of 20-25% of the group is not too bad. When contact was eventually made they were back at the car park. Sandie had been taking photos of fungi and in doing so, she, and others had become detached from the rest of us. I cannot take responsibility for people who disappear into the undergrowth to photograph something that has the potential to kill them. They drove round and joined us.
It had been a lovely day, relatively easy walking. Some had been plotting our route on their phones and I was pleased to see that in the ten miles we had covered, not once did we cross our own path; it had been a genuine irregular circular walk. Inevitably, we saw very little in the way of wild life, just an occasional deer disappearing in the distance. Squirrels were soon chased off by the dogs and as for wild boar, we saw nothing but their destruction. The autumn colours were superb.To have so many on the walk was a real pleasure, a lovely group of friends. I suspect that, with all the chatter that had occurred throughout, it was the jaws that ached at the end, rather than the legs.
