Mud, Mud…

…… glorious mud! Wherever you look and wherever you go, the rain of yesterday and overnight has taken its toll, the river’s full to overflowing as are all the ditches and dykes, everywhere that’s had any sort of footfall from animal, human or vehicle has been turned into a soggy, squelchy, brown morass.

Having said that, this afternoons stroll between the hedgerows, and the threat of showers, along the permissive path from Northfields to Hinton St Mary was always going to have mud as a primary constituent, you can’t walk a farm track in these conditions and not expect to get covered in the clingy, cloying, brown sludge, thank goodness for wellingtons I say!

At least the rain held off, mercifully, getting caught out by a rogue shower on open ground behind the football ground and the relative cover of farm buildings in Hinton could see one get quite a soaking, as it was this afternoon was more about the wind than the rain. Blowing quite briskly at times it carried the yells of the unseen footballers across the hedgerows, gave feral pigeons an extra turn of speed, at least in one direction, and kept the clouds moving West to East.

Given that the afternoon was relatively mild, by the time I’d climbed the hill through the farmyard and arrived at the beech avenue at Hinton I was glad of the opportunity to stop and take stock , the beech avenue still bare, the enormous low boughs providing shelter to the snowdrops and daffodils poking their colourful heads through the carpet of leaves and longer grasses gave a welcome respite from the mud on the earlier part of the journey and created a far softer, more attractive end to proceedings.