Hello and welcome back to my Blog 😊.

Today, myself and Angela enjoyed a 10.8 mile circular walk from Long Bennington passing through Claypole and Dry Doddington along the way.

It was a blue sky, but frosty, morning as we set off. We were looking forward to a nice walk.

We headed for the river Witham and followed it, walking along the raised embankment.

We could see the tide mark where the river had been high during the recent floods. The embankment was reasonably dry, and where it was wet, the water had frozen- we were grateful for that.

Fields adjacent to the river showed evidence of the floods.

The river meandered along, turning here and there. There is something nice about frosty grass on a sunny morning.

Along the river we came to a point where a metal gate was in place – a cattle watering point, although the cattle were tucked up in their barn for the winter months.

Further along we passed a nice weir.

After this point the official public right of way footpath ran out and the route that I had thought was ok had a ‘No Trespassers’ sign. We decided to head up a farm track instead, which eventually led us to a road, leading to Claypole. There were hundreds of small birds in the trees and flying around – almost like a murmuring. We could see a tall church spire in the distance- we would pass this soon.

Walking through the attractive village of Claypole we eventually found our footpath which would take us across the East Coast Mainline Railway – when we got there we found that Railtrack had fenced off the crossing. We have come across this on other walks – it is very annoying. Presumably it is avoid risk.

It looked like there might be a path beside the railway line that we could use but after following it for a while we came up against another ‘No Trasspassers ‘ sign.

We had no alternative but to walk back into Claypole and then take the road to Dry Doddington. It turned out to be a quiet lane, but just as Angela said that there was less traffic than she had expected, every man and his dog was driving along the road. Doh!

Arriving into Dry Doddington we admired the leaning tower of St James church. Apparently, the lean is greater than that of the Leaning Tower of Pisa.

A seat beside the village hall was a good place to stop for a cuppa.

Dry Doddington is a local high point but there were no views today as there was mist in the distance. We headed across fields from Dry Doddington to Long Bennington, meeting a dog walker whose dogs were vainly chasing a hare across the field. They had no chance! The dog walker said that there were lots of hares in the area and sure enough, we later saw another two hares.

Obstacles in our way was a theme on todays walk and sure enough we had another obstacle blocking our path – an electric fence. Luckily it was low enough to step across.

After crossing this muddy field it was nice to get some grass to walk on for the final mile back to the car.

Despite the challenges we both had enjoyed todays walk.

Happy Walking! 😊🚶