Last Sunday we went for a nice long walk with the dog.  Ended up being 21km, to a local pub (the Red Lion) and back.

For whatever reason, we took a slightly different route than previous walks, involving some untested footpaths.

Turns out this wasn't such a great idea.

It should have been a warning sign when our path led to this footbridge:

it also wobbled

This led into a cornfield, supposedly with the footpath running diagonally across it but this was impossible to do because of all the corn.

Having skirted the edge of the field we just about managed to find our next stile, which led to yet another field of corn.  And some brambles/weeds/general hedgerow along the side where the path was supposed to go.

corn and brambles/hedge - but no obvious path

Luckily at this point we found a big stick to bash at the vegetation with.  Particularly handy when the path went between two hedges.  Or through the middle of one giant hedge, depending how you looked at it...

Later on we came across another of my favourites - a footpath going into a field, but with no other way out again.

I'm just glad I wore trousers rather than shorts on this occasion!

All the footpath faff probably added an hour onto our walking time, which isn't ideal when you're trying to get to the pub before they stop serving lunch.  I understand that path maintenance requires time and effort, and obviously lesser used paths are always likely to be in a worse state, but it's very frustrating to run into

tags: local walking