onionbagblog

To Wivenhoe Quarry! …on a lazy Saturday afternoon. At least I think that it was Wivenhoe Quarry – that’s what @AnnaJCowen and I are calling the fishing lake stretch just off silly point behind the Cricket Club.

We’ve been walking the Wivenhoe Trail, as is – or even isn’t – out towards Alresford for the past twelve months, oblivious to the fact that our best foot forward is actually taking us in the opposite direction.

Hey hoe.

It’s all just semantics anyway. You say Elmstead, I say no thanks; I’d rather stay in and watch the Eastenders omnibus if you don’t mind.

But anyway – about that Wivenhoe Quarry…

We got lost and ended up along, um, the Wivenhoe Trail of all places. How the hell did that happen? Being guided by the most excellent hand drawn map of Wivenhoe by the fine Wilfred George probably gave us a bit of a detour. Penned in 1985, much has changed – including the Quarry.

It was all fine from our starting point of the allotments. Green fingered and green eyed as we gawped over the fence at what might be. The Girl and I have allotment ambitions.

That what I like – a man with achievable aims.

Even at the early entry point (steady) of the Saturday ramble, it soon became clear that this golden late autumnal afternoon was the perfect timing in which to take in the changing of the seasons.

The green of the summer months has now firmly given way to the gold. The patchwork of land stretching out from the allotment to the edge of the Quarry was a quilted explosion of varying fauna in different states of decay.

Piecing them all together was the public footpaths. Our own deluded doubling up way of walking meant that we walked round and round in circles, ensuring the quilt won’t come apart in the winter months to come. Well, not now that a pair of size 9′s has left a clumsy imprint all over the patchwork.

The soundtrack to all of this was the continual firing of a shotgun, and the distorted echo of the Wivenhoe Reserves filtering down from Broad Lane. Never the twain will meet, one would hope.

It all got a little Blair Witch somewhere along the wooded land by the Quarry. I took an eu naturale water break behind a stump, and seemed to set off a chain reaction.

Blimey – that’s never happened in a public place before.

Another ramble by mistake, and soon we were edging out towards the outfield at the Cricket Club once again. A late, late Indian summer ‘n all that, but Saturday was no day to parade your Persil fresh whites around Wivenhoe.

And with Wilfred guiding and confusing us with a twist and a turn of the map, there we were, walking through Wivenhoe Wood. Time and place had become distorted, and so had my big toe.

Back to base, after a brief walk along the Trail. To Alresford of course.

Next weekend: join the Girl and I as we walk to Sunny Colch and end up Fingringhoe.

Oh – get lost.

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