Having a Garmin watch has spurred me into taking more walks, even if they’re short ones, it’s nice to be able to map where you’ve been and the speed (or not!) that you walked at. I’ve two walks to share this week;

The first one was just from my house and along the old railway line, discovering a couple more local paths. June is a lovely time of year in this country, the trees are in blossom, the wild flowers are appearing…

There’s something about a field of buttercups, this is at the top of the hill behind our house. I followed the path down to the main road, planning to follow another back a bit further up the road. However I spotted a footpath sign opposite, I’ve lived her for over twenty years and never noticed it before!

It went through a couple of little hilly fields, I could see now why I’ve seen deer not far from here. It’s a quiet little backwater. The blossom on the hawthorn bushes has been lovely this year…

I followed the path up to the next half of the old railway line.

I was pleasantly surprised to see the bluebells were still out up here…

The foliage on the trees is still fresh and green, especially with the sun behind it…

Altogether I think I walked about 4.5 miles, all around my local area. Yesterday my walking buddy and I did a walk from Burley-in-Wharfedale. I worked out a route which could be lengthened or shortened depending on the weather and how we were feeling!

We walked up to a little hamlet called Stead. It was quite a pull up to the farm and we were just saying we were ready for a coffee and a sausage roll when we turned into the farm yard and found they had a refreshments van, so we had a cup of lovely fresh coffee. Apparently she’s open every day apart from Wednesdays! Someone on the farm obviously had a sense of humour too…

For those of you not familiar with the animation of Wallace and Gromit, this is Shaun the sheep and Gromit the dog, the films are worth checking out, they’re very amusing and done in a lovely Yorkshire accent – maybe I’m a wee bit biased!

We walked down to the river Wharfe to a little nature reserve, hoping to see the otters again, but unfortunately they didn’t put in an appearance this time. There were lots of damsel flies flitting about though and the red kites were soaring in the thermals above.

From there we followed a footpath to another nature reserve, this one was at the end of Sun Lane, I only found out about it through a little leaflet I picked up on walks around Burley.

By this time we’d walked a fair way in hot sunny weather so we decided not to continue further down the river in the hope of seeing the elusive kingfisher, we meandered back to the car instead through the snickets of Burley, having walked 6.5 miles, far enough considering the hot (for UK!) weather.