I put myself on a single track lane at eight on an August evening with trailers running flat out, and spent twenty minutes pressed into a hedge. Since then I plan around the farming calendar instead of pretending it is not happening.
Nettles, a wheel rim, and something with tines that I still cannot identify. Notes on the abandoned machinery and collapsed barns that sit in field corners along my walks, why nobody moves them, and why I look but do not climb.
Rain I plan for. Cold I plan for. Wind I keep walking straight into like it is going to be fine, and about twice a year it reminds me that open farm ground has no shelter in it at all.
Four or five times a year I abandon a route partway through. I used to treat that as a failure and push on anyway. Turning back earlier has made my walking better, and here is how I decide.
A neighbour asked what she needed to buy before she could start walking. My whole first year ran on old trainers, jeans and a football coat, and those walks taught me which problems were actually worth solving.
I spent years walking past a hedge full of birds without being able to name a single one. Here is how I started with three species instead of thirty, why sound comes before sight, and where the identification app helped and where it got in my way.
A collie I was minding put up a flock of sheep in a bottom field and I could not call her back. Nothing was hurt. It could easily have gone another way. Here is how I handle a dog in farm country now, and why the lead goes on before the gate.
For years I let a rain icon on a screen cancel my week. Then I got caught out in a steady soaker and had one of the best walks of that spring. Rain is not the problem. Cold, wind, and lightning are the problems.
A snapped pack buckle at a stile made me audit three years of buying. What turned out to be worth paying more for, where I honestly cannot tell the difference, and the purchases I regret most.
I misread a group of young bullocks one May evening and ended up backing toward a hedge with my heart going. Here is what I have learned since about reading a herd, choosing a line, and the one thing I got badly wrong about dogs and cows.