"Are you lost, lady?"
Yesterday I went on a pre-hike with one of the new hike leaders. Though I'm no longer hike leader, I'm sort of the knowledge bank of the group. This hike around Hughenden, home of Benjamin Disraeli, is particularly hard to follow unless you've done it before. The problem is, the hike directions refer to footpaths by their numbers: H13, H2, D5, etc. That would be easy, except there's no way to know which footpath is H13 or D5—they're not marked, and there are dozens of them in this particular area, crisscrossing through woods and across pastures.
They also refer to woods by their name: Great Tinker's Woods or Little Cookshall Wood or the ghoulish Hanging Wood. Again, there's no signpost when you enter a wood exclaiming "You've just entered Tinker's Woods!" or somesuch. This particular walk refers to a "squirrel fence", a "pumping station", and a "line of lime trees". I'm dead certain citrus trees do not grow in the woods around Hughenden, plus I have a sneaking suspicion lime trees are actually linden trees, or, in America, basswood.
Anyway, you get the idea. Walks in Britain are not for the faint of heart. It's pretty much like driving, at least before sat navs (GPS units) were invented. (I still don't use a sat nav, mainly because I can't figure out how to turn the darn things on.)
But I digress. The part of this hike I enjoyed most were these friendly horses, who we came across near Downley Common. Downley Common is part of the hamlet of Downley, which you'd never be able to find without a pretty good map or a hike leader who's been there before.
But apparently Downley Common is important enough to have its own Preservation Society. And its own frontloader:
"Property of Downley Common Preservation Society"
I don't know why, but that just tickled me. I guess you had to be there.
