Last of the year

Sat 20 Dec ‘25. DH, RW, PCL, DL, JB, CH, Ralph, Scrumpy & Albus

It’s been another wet week on the run up to Christmas and having missed walking last weekend, when there were just two of us available, (I popped around to have a good cup of Biscoffi type tea with Chris instead of putting on our boots), the Saturday morning forecast was looking good enough to be back out in the countryside for our final walk of the year. Unfortunately with Pete and John still injured and Brian on family duties, it was just the six of us signed up for today. However faced with the option of going shopping with his mum or walking with his Grandad, Ralph accepted my invitation to join us once again - although only after he had checked that his mate JB would be walking as well.

The day started quite brightly in Wincanton and after Chris had cleared the early morning frost from his car and we had picked up our last passenger, we were running a few minutes behind schedule as we made our way eastwards on the A303. The sun had not yet appeared from behind the angry looking clouds over to our south and it looked like someone was gently an early morning shower down the Blackmore Vale. Thankfully we soon turned north and with a good run up arrived at a frosty Frome Football Club only about 10 minutes later than planned. As we drove down the long driveway we were all startled when a deer shot out in front of the car, only missing hitting the bonnet by no more than a couple of feet and then a second one a bit further off to our right.

Once we had exchanged early morning pleasantries and Christmas Cards and were good to go, we headed back down the driveway and turned left on the road for a couple of hundred metres to a stile on our left side. On the gate was a warning sign for lambs in the field which, with an empty field in front of us, we all though was a left over from the spring, however as we made our way further through the frosty grass we saw a large number of young ones with their mums higher up the field. The field was a lot firmer than I expected and apart from a couple of muddy gateways it was a really pleasant start to the morning. We caught sight of another deer at the bottom edge of a field, making it three for the morning, probably the most we had seen all year. We worked our way around to the right and then dropped down to cross a busy road at Egford before heading down to the top of the area known as Vallis Vale.

It’s pretty hard to believe, but absolutely terrific that we have made it to the end of another year of our Saturday morning strolls with the ‘Walking Dead’, rounding off the five years in which we have grown significantly, since the early pre Covid monthly walks.