It was 3°C and there was thick frost covering everything outside at 7:20 AM when I was up and about, could hear the fire being re-laid, and there was ice on my windows. I tried to warm my toes up a bit, then my right thigh began to be used as a cat pillow, and I heard the headlines. Soot – the almost 20 year old cat…

…purred on top of me until I had to get up, American politics was the topic on the radio when I went downstairs, then breakfast was served; and not much had thawed outside when we left the table. I gave Soot a stairlift down from my bed, sat down in my chair, and continued the writing up of my notes into a diary that I do (I’m usually a couple of days behind and it means I can review them, check there’s no gaps, and no not-done-to-dos). He came and sat on me after a meowing outburst from the top of the stairs, and purred while I kept writing; I was almost finished when he got off for his spa treatment/grooming at 10:45 (as Mum had boiled the kettle and got out the brush), and I finished it, packed my bag and put my hat on. It was 3°C at 11:30AM when we got in the car (Soot was on the sunny back of the sofa), I saw a miniscule Dachshund (wearing a coat) who was walking very enthusiastically with his or her owner, Cubbington was passed through, followed by Offchurch – where HS2 work was continuing and was absolutely ginormous, a place offering campervan conversions was just outside of Priors Hardwick, and we had to stop, look at the map and do a U-turn. At 12:05 PM what seemed to be Chesterton windmill was visible on a distant hill, and three minutes later we were following a couple of horses trotting along a lane, and it was 12:12 PM when we found the village – and the pub called The Butchers Arms. We parked opposite the pub, a couple of stone benches and a donated lamp post were by the car, Mum decided to experiment and put her reading glasses on in front of her sunglasses – to see if she could read while wearing both rather than having to keep changing them – and found it worked, and we set off at 12.23pm.

We went up a small hill to Saint Mary’s Church, through the churchyard – where I spotted a couple of small photos of a pet service done there…

…and through what seemed to be several peoples back gardens – and a field; I spotted the disintegrating footpath gate we were meant to find in its corner, and we popped out on a lane. Home Farm, The Old Vicarage, The Old Coach House, The Old School and Old Hill Farm were all passed on this lane, birds and sheep were the only things audible, and after a turning was a lane with Hillside Barn and Pingle house on it. Fenny Compton and Wormleighton were the signs next followed (and the lane had a very old water tap on it) – to a dead end, so we did a u-turn, and I saw a rooster in the garden of Pingle House. We couldn’t find the next footpath, so we climbed over a fence and went up quite a steep hill with sheep (and one black sheep) on and spectacular views over everywhere – and Southam Tower was pointed out to me. The gate in the corner was found and we took a right turning along the edge, passed under what the book said was a chestnut tree, went over an electric wire/collapsed fence, then manoeuvred our way through an extremely prickly area to reach a fallen over tree showing its massive roots. Gunshots could be heard and got very loud as we climbed up the hill and at the top the field got extremely gooey; we climbed over a fence and Mum spotted a device she termed ‘a pigeon scarer’ – and a strange scarecrow next to it…

…(and later, I discovered a whole Wikipedia article on bird scarers – https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Birdscarer); a tied shut gate was clambered over to a field with outstanding views, and once down at the bottom of it a lane was reached, and I could see a bridge over a canal way off in the distance at the end of a massive field of something. Stoneton Moat Farms driveway had a tractor on (being driven by a man who said hello) and led us to a fence from where a canal bridge was visible – so we climbed over, and the pigeon scarer continued to make its gunshot noises as we continued through the next several fields (one with a massive blue tractor in) to a huge bridge labelled as ‘126’ – over a canal, and then over a collapsed footpath fence right down to the side of this canal (which the book said we had a mile to walk along) where Mum started eating the lunch brought with her and I nibbled an oatcake from my bag.

2.34pm was when we moved again, the water was extremely murky and the path was alarmingly close to the water…

…there was a massive mound of something covered in black plastic on the other side at 2:52 PM, and ice on the water. We went under Bridge 125 at 2:55 PM, and then at Bridge 124 (which said on it that it had a 13 tonne limit) we left the canal via what she termed ‘an unnecessarily difficult path’…

A furrowed field with squidgy patches was the next bit of terrain, and we left that at 3:20 PM next to a house being built. Doebank Manor had a dovecote in the front garden and we popped out on the road we’d started on at 3.27pm, and made it to the car 5 minutes later (and the man on the tractor was the only human we’d seen during the walk). The car said the temperature was 3°C, the lanes were wiggled back through, and when we got home at 4.07pm, Soot said hello, the kettle was boiled and the fire was lit.