Haystaircase

A size umpteen football boot, near Newbold-on-Stour, Warwickshire.

The morning was merrily spent dossing around for the most part and nursing what I suspect was a twisted knee from the wander around Maxstoke the evening before. Ibruprofen and Paracetomol wouldn't shift it. So come the afternoon, I figured I could either walk it off or make it worse by walking. Since I was going walking, the knee would have to come with me and I'd find out soon enough.

I enjoy the silent conversation I have with myself as I pour over maps and decide where I would like to go. Today I decided to head over to Preston-on-Stour where, if memory serves, there would be a cluster of quaint cottages and walks around higher ground in the direction of Clifford Chambers. So off I went.

I made a mistake at the intersection of the A429 and A22. Instead of turning onto the A22, I stayed on the A429. Fortunately a large, crescent-shaped pull in is available north of Lambcote Farm, which I proceeded to use, only impulsively and through curiosity, to drive a little further in the direction of Ettington Park Hotel. A sweeped entrance to a gate enabled me to stop and take a GPS check, and this way I learned that I was less than a 100 yards from the start of a path which would take me south to Halford. This is where I ended up going.

The start of the walk was greeted with the blast of gunfire coming from somewhere in the direction of two o'clock which would jolt the neighbourhood for the rest of the afternoon. The path was broad and took me along the edge of a small wood, past a line of mature buddleja to where the southern vista opened. Here I found this reasonably new, but collapsed hay stack and also, my first of several later sightings of patches of giant hogweed. From the stack, in a series of gentle dips and rises, the path continues in the direction of Halford.

Beginning a long gentle climb, there was a field of flowerless rapeseed to the right and of wheat to the left, with a lining of brambles, thistle and teasel at the field edge, and families of small tortoiseshell darting here and there. Nearing the hill crest, either side of the path, stand two tall oaks. The gunmen had not tired of their weapons, and as these oaks were approached, their bulk operated as soundboards, amplifying the woosh and crack, and suggesting I was not far from the target. Shortly prior to the oaks I attained a position where I could isolate these three trees from their nearest neighbours.

At the end of the broad walk, a metal kissing gate brought me to a harvested field. I could not be sure what had once grown here but what was left did not make fine walking territory. Rather, the ground resembled a trap for a medieval enemy army. Full of hollow, tough, spikey shafts about 10 inches tall. The northern edge of this field sweeps to the east where the land falls away to the banks of the River Stour and the village of Halford.

It had been a fabulous short walk and a joy to be in open country. But it was hot and I was thirsty. So very sensibly, once at the village, I searched out the boozer and necked a pint of Purity Mad Goose while flicking through the pickies I had taken. I now had to repeat the walk in the opposite direction. The knee was in god nick.