A VERY Cold Training Walk on 27th November 2010

Other people stop blogging over the holiday period, but I find the holidays give me time to post! This is a very over-due post on our last training walk on Saturday 27th November. I can't forget the date as this would have been my mother in law, Rose's, 87th Birthday. John was walking wearing his Mum's silver ingot in memory of her and he commented on how very cold the silver ingot was against his skin. We started very early at about 7.50am and it was very, very cold. I have no idea what the temperature was, but it was cold!! I even wore a woolly hat, borrowed from my son ....... and I don't usually 'do' hats!

We decided to do a long circular walk, going south towards Theobalds Grove and then crossing over the A10 on the recently opened footbridge you can see here. We must have looked odd up on the footbridge to anyone driving underneath.

The bridge is stark white and a very modern design. I guess you either love it or hate it but it certainly eye-catching!

This was definately a walk for taking frosty pictures! But on a day like this, I always find myself wondering just how the little birds manage to survive. I guess, in truth, they don't! I was only reading the other day that in the hard winter of 1963/4, the population of wrens in Great Britain plummeted so may I take this opportunity to encourage anyone reading this to put food out for the birds.

Having crossed the footbridge, we made our way across to the New River and followed that northwards. At the point where this comes near to Broxbourne Town Hall, we saw a Green Woodpecker. It was more interested in looking for food than worrying about us, so we got quite a good view of him as he hunted for food on the grass.

Looking at these frosty pictures and thinking back to how cold we were, it makes me thankful for having a nice warm house. In weather like we've been having just recently, I can't help but think about those souls who are living rough.

We carried on walking north along the New River until we got to Rye House. At this point, we joined the Lea and walked south to home.

In total, we walked around 14 miles in a time of 5 hours.

Since then, the weather has been so bad, we haven't been able to go out ..... so roll on better weather.