With our usual walking day falling on Christmas Day it was decided to delay the walk until early January – so we ended the year and begun it all in one go; and what fortune we had as it turned out to be a perfect day that sat between many grey, cold and miserable ones.  It was the same route as last year but we had none of the dramas we experienced then when we had to extract long and painful thorns from the soles of two walkers that involved much pulling with secateurs and pushing with the handle of a penknife to extract them.

Starting at The Cobbins our route took us over fields to the north of Burnham, round the ‘end of the line’ at the Mangapps Railway Museum and eventually up into Southminster.   We disturbed a muntjac deer that galloped frantically away from us keeping cover in the sparse hedge beside us. From Southminster we headed south returning by fields that led to Stoney Hills (we were all surprised and disappointed at the amount of construction going on there)  – and so back to The Cobbins.

Mulled wine and hot food rounded off the morning and so ended 2018 and 2019 began.

Diane Caulkett