Alresford

We set off this morning with messages from our respective husbands to ‘not walk too far, stay in the shade, take water and take it easy’, all because there was a yellow weather warning for heat. Now we’re obviously not used to the heat in the UK and after a few ‘nice’ days the warnings are issued (I think it was getting up to 28 degrees Celsius, so not quite heatwave levels).

According to the Met Office ‘Yellow alerts may be issued during periods of heat which would be unlikely to impact most people, but those who are particularly vulnerable (E.g. the elderly with multiple health conditions and on multiple medications) and are likely to struggle to cope.’ I’m not sure about the ‘elderly’ part, but we possibly tick the other two boxes.

So, with all that in mind we set off a bit earlier (9.15 instead of 10.00), with a shorter walk in mind, to the lovely little town of Alresford.

The high street is always busy so we headed a little way out to a public car park at the Town Council office. There’s also a cafe in the building so it would be handy for a coffee on our return.

We followed the path along The Avenue until we reached Drove Lane. Walking down the lane we soon crossed over the River Aire, before meeting up with the Wayfarer’s Walk.

We followed the path, keeping in the shade, until we met up with the river again and an interesting little structure – an Eel House. I forgot to take a photo of the house, but did find a handy sign which outlined the history.

We passed a sweet little memorial and then found the ducks. Well there weren’t quite hundreds but there were a lot, all over the path as well as in the river. There was a table with a box containing little bags of duck food, together with an honesty box and a note note about Amy, who loves feeding the ducks and puts together the food for people to use.

Taking a bag, and putting our money in the box, we found a bench and were soon surrounded by ducks. At one point I turned to find one of the ducks had hopped up onto the bench beside me. She was very happy to take food from my hand, although I got the feeling I wasn’t giving her enough as she made her way onto my lap and wouldn’t get off. I wouldn’t have minded but her feet were wet and muddy and my trousers were clean on this morning.

Moving on, after carefully lifting the duck off my lap, we continued along the river towards Fulling Mill, a beautiful old thatched mill house. The mill dates from the 13th century and is now a private house with a rather beautiful garden.

Continuing on we headed back to the town and, eventually, the carpark, popping into two cafés on the way. We were a bit thrown by the early start as it was too early for lunch at the first cafe (but not too early for cake), then we weren’t hungry when we reached the second, so had to settle for a teacake and some crumpets with Marmite.

A beautiful walk, mainly in the shade as instructed and we still managed just over two and a half miles.