Quiet Footpath

Had to take my car into the garage for some minor repair work yesterday, with the view to picking it up the same day. Unfortunately, as seems the case so often, the garage were supplied with the wrong part, so they had to delay the repair until today.  The garage is about three miles from my home and I usually use my bicycle to drop off and pick up my car – I can put it in the back of my small MPV.  However, today was not a day for riding my bike – a temperature just above freezing after a dusting of snow overnight and driving snow showers meant I preferred to ‘wimp out’, choosing to hoof it instead.

Although the title would suggest one thing, the footpath is anything but quiet, as it runs alongside the A1 Motorway, a main route North/South through England.  The scrub trees on the right give some relief from the traffic noise and more particularly today, some respite from the biting wind.  In the event, as I often find, the weather became perfectly reasonable for cycling, but, hey, it was a pleasant walk.  (And I saw my first Treecreeper of the year – once a birdwatcher always a birdwatcher!)

—Stephen—