A short walk along the railway

[shewhomust]

Eight days ago, we drove through the rain to visit J., and I noticed how green the hedges were: not a may blossom to be seen. Today durham_rambler suggested we go for a stroll. He took me to the picnic area which is our easy access point for the network of railway walks (we have lots of disused railway lines, most but not all of them mineral lines) and all the short way there, the hedges were so heavy with hawthorn ...

Plenty of blossom along the walk, too, hawthorn and rowan and wild flowers, and it was lovely. We didn't walk far, maybe a mile and a half there and back, but it's better than nothing...

durham_rambler said "I didn't rememer how open the views are from the walk." Which is odd, because I didn't remember how much woodland it ran through. But it's a long time since we walked that way, and as durham_rambler pointed out, some of those trees probably weren't there then. This signpost was certainly new:

So was the On the Hoof café in a horsebox, where we stopped for a drink (have to support local businesses).

Comments

[cmcmck]

Permissive paths amuse me! There are any number of them locally.

I've never been quite sure what they allow you to get up to- permissive bridle paths sound distinctly kinky! :o)

[shewhomust]

I'm less cheerful about permissive paths. It's nice to be "permitted" to walk them, but it's even nicer to walk them as of right. There's a path through the grounds of Howick Hall in Northumberland which used to be permissive, which was an essential link in a favourite walk of ours, until they closed it. Now you can only use it if you pay to visit the grounds of the Hall (which you might want to do, but not as part of that walk...)