Country walk

One thing I do miss about living in England is the enormous number of public rights of way and country paths between towns and villages. Where we live in Canada there are lots of trails, but they haven't evolved over centuries in the same way that the paths in England have: they tend to be limited to parks and nature conservation areas.

One of our favourite activities when we lived in England was to go off on a country walk somewhere. And if the walk was circular and had a pub at some point, then all the better. We quite often used to get lost, but that was part of the fun.

I had a day without meetings today, so went off for a walk with my dad at lunchtime. We hiked along part of the Greensand Ridge Walk, ending up at the Globe Inn beside the Grand Union Canal.

A couple of swans were on patrol:

We got slightly lost a couple of times, as is traditional. On the way back, we came through Knolls Wood, which has an amazing avenue of Monkey Puzzle (Araucaria araucana trees. I'm not very fond of these trees, as a rule, but the sight of so many, all in one place, was quite striking.