no better day for quietly walking

Before settling down for a day of extremely large plates of vegetables (luckily only accompanied by a couple of sausages rather than chicken too as the cooking-father underestimated the cooking-time required), the new Aardman, the unwrappings, the back end of a televised Lear and several pints of coffee in place of booze I got up nice and early for a visit to some of my other favourite woodlands which I didn't get round to poking at in September. It seems that the Ups and Downs have been entirely supplanted by the more spacious woods off Kirkby Lane; whereas the former are overgrown and unused the latter now sport even more bumps and ramps augmenting the natural undulations then they were years ago. It was quiet enough to be able to hear the whoosh of flocks of some sort of waterfowlesque birds passing overhead and I only passed one person amongst the paths; unfortunately they were walking a dog but strangely it seemed scared of me and almost refused to walk past the bit of path next to where I was standing with the tripod whereas usually dogs seem to want to attempt to lick my legs when they pass.