Tickley

Tucked away just off the A339, not far from Lasham airfield, is a lovely area of open space and woodland owned by the Woodland Trust, complete with two car parks.

Last week’s weather was quite mild. Yesterday it was lovely and warm (I had washing on the line and even cut the grass). Today was cold, wet and very windy – woolly hat and gloves weather. But it’s Tuesday and we were going to walk, rain or no rain.

We had two options from the car park, a circular walk to the village of Bradley, taking in the village church, or explore the woodland following one of the marked paths. We chose the woodland which, in hindsight, might not have been our greatest idea.

Unsurprisingly there was mud, mud and more mud, which got thicker and wetter the further we went.

There were a couple of dry(ish) bits and we had a couple of diversions through the woods to try to avoid the worst of it, but we pressed on.

Eventually we emerged onto a lane. We had walked about a mile and a half through the woods and were still only half a mile from our starting point (which was back down the lane). So decision time, continue through the woodland on the other side of the lane, walk back along the lane towards the car park or take the public footpath towards Bradley. Not sure that we could face more mud and not content with too short a walk, we headed towards Bradley.

Definitely the better option, as we walked along a, presumably unadopted, road. It was full of potholes, but no mud so that was a bonus.

The footpath turned off the road and into a field. There was a ‘lambs’ sign at the gate and we immediately spotted three rams. One had rather impressive horns and kept a wary eye on us as we walked past. We tried not to make eye contact and kept our fingers crossed that he wasn’t going to chase us away.

Fortunately the lambs and their mummy’s were in a separate field, although the gate between was open.

We crossed the field and got to the inevitable stile. For some reason it wasn’t the easiest one to get over. The step was high and the fence post to hold onto was low and wobbly. I got one leg up, but couldn’t quite get the other one to follow. Several minutes later, and with the assistance of a shove from behind, we made it over.

We negotiated the flooded bit of field, spotting what looked like a summer house in the distance and a solar farm. Is it a solar farm or just a field of solar panels?

By now we’d walked about two and a half miles and to continue to Bradley and back round to the carpark would have added another two and a half miles, so we decided to turn back. There’s too short, but also too long, we needed that happy medium.

As windy as it was, and it was very windy, once we were back in the flooded field it felt quite sheltered. We could see the trees waving and could hear the wind blowing through them, but in the field itself it was very calm.

Back over the stile, which was easier this way round. Then we spotted a couple of lambs which had ventured a bit closer to the fence.

Once back at the car, and with the worst of the mud cleaned off our jeans, we made our way to the cafe at the Lasham Gliding Club for a very nice lunch and a big mug of tea, before back home to clean some very muddy boots, all ready for next week.