Bull!

I have two literary ambitions tonight.  One is to get my journal all caught up, which this chapter will do.  The other is to finish Wildfell Hall, my third Bronte novel, which I’m quite liking, but I’m feeling ready to read something different.

One of my walking guides recommended a walk from a pair of windmills called Jack and Jill then out to a few hills and villages.  I’d mentioned this to a few of my Rambler companions yesterday and several of them endorsed it as a good area to visit.  It also had the benefit of needing a map I didn’t own yet, so I would have to dawdle around the inn until the outfitters opened.  I was feeling the 32 miles over the previous two days, and a little extra repose was welcome.  Walking out to the outfitters and back would also reassure me that I wasn’t too crippled to go walking (I wasn’t).

By the time I pulled into the parking lot by Jack and Jill, it was about 11:30.  The walk was forecast at 9 miles and looked pretty straightforward.  I even thought I’d figured out how to get to Pyecombe where there is a pub before 2 PM when lots of pubs stop serving lunch or close till evening. 

The windmills themselves didn’t strike me as anything special.  In fact, I was a little irked that these old useless windmills are viewed as picturesque while what I think of as very graceful electricity generating windmills some people are building in parts of the UK are viewed as eyesores.  Setting that aside, in the course of the walk, I did figure out why they’re such a feature of the route.  I could see them through probably half of the walk from all kinds of different points of view.  They do actually look nice from some of the distant hill sides.  In fact, the only perspective from which I didn’t find them pretty was standing right next to them.

Only a few journal worthy features of the hike.  I did not make Pyecombe before 2 PM because I finally ran across an honest to goodness bellowing, snorting bull in a field I was supposed to walk across.  He only had one horn, but that just made me confident he’d lost the other one running into something or some one.  I didn’t see him until he was quite close, and he made it very clear he didn’t like me being there.  He ran a few steps toward me and stopped, which looked enough like a practice swing to me that I hopped over a fence much more gracefully than I’d bet anyone I could have done.  I burned more than half an hour thrashing my way through a few other fields until I got back to a path taking me the right direction.  It was clear from light tracks in the foliage that I wasn’t the first one to have to dodge this fellow.

Fortunately, The Plough serves all afternoon, so I was able to get a creditable calizone and a couple of good pints.  On my walk out of the village, a woman in a car pulled over to ask me directions to a nearby village.  It happened to be part of my route, so I knew where it was but I had to fiddle with the map a little to change modes from “How will I walk there?” to “How should she drive there?”  We eventually got her sorted out and on her way.

I had a little more excitement coming down from a hill I started climbing just after lunch.  The map showed a path going due north from the summit, but as far as I could see it would take someone from a Mountain Dew commercial with a helmet and goggles and one of those luge with wheels thingies to really enjoy going straight down.  I found another way down without too much trouble, although part of the route involved a bridle trail that had a soupy clay surface that had me jumping from solid spot to solid spot.  Just like the walk yesterday, I ended with a long climb back to the parking spot.

There, I’m caught up.  Now, if I can get online, I’ll post these and go try to polish off Wildfell Hall.

Garmin Facts:  11 miles 4 hours 2.7 mph.  450 meters climbed.