Whee … splash!

Update: jumping into rivers is not recommended by the Cambridgeshire Fire and Rescue Service.

Five lads on the bridge. One jumped off, shortly before this one. The last three chatted on the bridge for ages, then jumped off one by one.

(I’m sure I’ve blipped something like this before, but I can’t find it.

Update: I knew I’d blipped something like this before!)

We were at the pub to rest and recover from our nearly 12-and-a-half-mile walk in toasty heat.

Route

I was given the responsibility of creating a route for today’s walk, with the suggestion of heading towards Little Downham, so we didn’t need to get the train. I’m not sure that will happen again :D

I packed my bag with more stuff than necessary for one day to get used to carrying all the things for when we do Hadrian’s Wall Path.

Water tower

We set off and went uphill – the village has one hill, with a few routes up it. We saw the water tower (see extra) closer up than I’ve ever seen it. It really is big.

Holiday home

We went along a public footpath along the edge of a field (with no drainage ditch!) at the top of the hill that joins the road where Mr Perkins’ holiday home is. From there, we crossed the A10, and the real adventure began.

Experience

The route took in a lot of droves and public footpaths, some of which Mr Pandammonium was familiar with, but not necessarily in the same direction that we were travelling in.

He knew, for example, that the public footpath through the farm on the map didn’t coincide with where the path actually went. The mapped path goes straight through a wheat field.

Water cycle

Further on, we came across a machine pumping water out of the drainage ditch, where it had drained into from the fenland fields, and along to an irrigation spray that waters the fields that have drained their water into the drainage ditches, whence it is pumped onto the fields to water the fields whence the water has drained into the drainage ditches …

We were boiling, and the water looked nice and cool and refreshing. Mr Pandammonium thought it might go as far as the path, but I wasn’t so sure. When we drew almost level with it, the plants on the path were wet: it seemed the water did reach the path; we just needed the breeze to go in the right direction when the irrigator rotated back to us.

We didn’t have to loiter long. A fine spray sprinkled us with coolness, then it swept away. I was reluctant to move for a little while because the breeze coming through the spray was deliciously cool. The sprinkler headed back our way, and we noticed it was doing bigger drops. We got a bit damp, which was nice and cooling, and it dried off pretty quickly.

Wide

We crossed the train line, then arrived at a fork in the drove. The OS app said to go left, but before we carried on, we noticed a sign along the right-hand drove banning motor vehicles. (We saw other instances of the same sign on later droves.)

The warning sign had a paragraph of text on another sign below it. It was too far to read, so I zoomed in with the camera lens:

1st October
to 30th April
or when barrier
is locked closed
except for
permit holders

The drove didn’t look motor-vehicle friendly in these dry conditions, and neither did the one we were heading down. It certainly didn’t look wide enough for a tractor.

It certainly was wide enough for a tractor.

But not wide enough for a tractor and us, so we huddled in relatively nettle-and-thistle-free patches at the side till a tractor passed.

Maps

A bit further on, and the droves tangled into strange ways. Again, the OS app helped us find the right one. Maps and droves do sometimes line up; I’m almost sure of it.

The droves behaved themselves after that; some of them had the same signs restricting motor vehicles. We reckoned it must get pretty clarty in the winter.

Downham

We eventually made it to Little Downham – or Downham in the Isle, as its village sign (see extra) says. We had refreshments in the hostelries, but we didn’t eat in them for reasons.

California

Once refreshed, we pootled off along a public footpath to California. No, not that one. That’s too far to walk even by Mr Pandammonium’s standards, plus we’d have to swim quite far. We went to the California in the extra.

Swooping

Along a stretch of very straight drove, we spotted some gliders overhead. Two of them were up high, swooping and gliding.

The third got pretty low – below four hundred feet, according to my app for that, down from over a thousand – and started circling and circling, presumably in a bid to persuade the thermals into raising his altitude.

It was really noisy, like it had an engine, but it must have been only the wind because there was nowhere an engine could have gone and there were no propellers or anything.

Return

Back at our village, we braved a little section of the A10 and turned along the drove that forms part of the parkrun course. I’ve never walked along its full length before.

Straight

The sun continued to boil and bake us, so I had to persuade my legs to go a bit farther to the pub instead of going straight home. They weren’t happy about it, but they did it.

As ever, the service was rubbish, and my lemonade had ice in, despite the request for no ice. It’s a lot easier to neck lemonade without ice than it is with ice: the ice inhibits the flow of liquid, hindering imbibition of said liquid.

Lads

We sat outside, where we saw the aforementioned lads.