Today’s misadventure took me to a wide, flat valley flanked by low heather-clad moors. Sounds lovely, right? But Codhill Slack, or Rivelindale to use its Medieval name, has a bottom that is a boggy morass with plenty of standing water, thanks to yesterday’s heavy rain.
In the distance are a couple of well-known landmarks. Highcliffe or Codhill Farm — the name depends on which scale of O.S. map you are looking at. And then we have Highcliff Nab, which doesn’t even have the ‘e‘.
Now back to the comedy. It started when I spotted a quad bike track through the bracken on the other side of the beck. I took a beeline for it and soon found myself hopping from tussock to tussock as graceful as an elephant, trying to avoid getting my feet wet. Let’s just say it didn’t end well. But at least I stayed upright.
On the bright side, I did manage to disturb a Heron and a Greylag. Maybe not so bright from the birds’ point of view, but I’m pretty sure they were laughing as they flew away. And what was the point of all this effort? To see what the keepers on their quad bike had been up to, of course. And what had they been doing? Just bodging up a gate in the fence. I could have saved myself a lot of trouble by not being nosey and just sticking to my usual route a few hundred metres downstream.
That’s what I like about being in the great outdoors – you never know what kind of ridiculous situations you’re going to find yourself in.
So, all in all, a successful day’s outing.
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