Stick to the Roads

There's a scene in the film "An American Werewolf in London" where Jack and David set off to walk through the moors in Northern England.  As they're thanking the gentleman who gave them a ride, he reminds them to "stick to the roads".  Of course, after leaving The Slaughtered Lamb they go off road, in the dark, and we all know what happens next.  If you don't know what happens, well then, it's time you watched the movie.

Let me tell you why I'm thinking about this particular movie.  Although it was only about 35 degrees today, the skies were blue and the wind was non-existent.  I found a map for a nearby footpath (a 6.75 mile loop through a couple of villages), grabbed the camera and took off.  I started my walk at about 13.15.  Allowing time for photo stops, I figured it would take 2.5 hours, 3.0 at most.  Sunset these days is at about 16.15, and it's not completely dark until close to 17.00.  Shouldn't be a problem.

The key word here is “shouldn’t”. If you’ve been reading the blog for awhile, you may remember that I’ve posted several times about the footpath maps; they’re not always very clear. Today was no exception. To be perfectly honest – at some point I took a wrong turn and got lost beyond all belief. I’m surprised I’m still not out there walking around somewhere.

Coincidentally, as of my walk last week, I started taking my GPS with me and recording my "tracks”. I haven’t really learned to use this to figure out how far I’ve gone, but it does show a line of the route I’ve taken. So, after 2 plus hours of walking and realising that I had no clue where I was, I looked at the gps. The little blue line showing my route should have been looping back around to my starting point. However, I saw that I had somehow managed to walk in a relatively straight line (despite the many turns I’d taken) and was moving further and further away from the starting point. If I were to simply backtrack, I'd never get back to my car before dark.  What I couldn’t see on the gps were any roads or towns, so I fired up the maps application on my mobile to see if that would help. It helped in the sense that I could see I needed to head north. So here’s where I broke all the rules of good footpath etiquette. The compass on the gps pointed north, and I took the shortest route available, which was a straight line through numerous fields. Besides, at this point, there were no footpaths to be found.

After walking a good 45 minutes, I finally found a road and a couple of people to help me identify my location on the footpath map. By now, it was after 16.00, I was still 2 miles away from the car, and the sun was slipping below the tree line. Despite knowing where I was and having a choice of 2 footpaths to get me back to the car, the fact that it was getting dark was a concern. The couple helping me said, and I quote, “this time of night, I’d stick to the roads.”

So, as I left the road and headed across the moors field on the footpath, I could think of nothing but “An American Werewolf in London.” The good news - there was no full moon, so no need to fear that the werewolves would be out. The bad - there was no moon at all, which made it incredibly dark and difficult to find the gates as I walked across the fields.

When I got home, I recreated (to the best of my ability) the route I took on Gmaps Ped.  Turns out it took me 9 miles to cover that 6.75 mile footpath.  Now, on to the pictures.

A view over Yelden, my starting point

Self-portrait from atop Yelden Castle, which is now little more than an earthworks mound.

Another view from Yelden Castle

Just outside Yelden

Heading into Melchbourne.  I just loved this tree

In Melchbourne

While getting directions from a couple of people, they pointed out to me that a "hunt" was going on.  Sure enough, we looked across to a nearby field and saw loads of dogs running and barking.  Sadly, that's all I could see.  But as I was walking down the road, I came upon a couple of the people who were in the hunt and they were kind enough to let me take a picture.