Challock 6 Miler

Twice each year, Dad leads a 6 mile guided walk through Challock Forest, and today's one such day. Meggie, the old girl, at 11, is now a bit weary for a 6 mile one (hour and a half is about her limit now) so we have to leave her behind, but Dad, being a daft old brush, wants to spare her feelings, so concocts a plan to get us 2 away without the obvious "Come on - collars on, No, Not you this time Meggie".

So he races with Meg to the bottom of the garden where he knows she'll be absorbed for a few minutes sniffing for rats in the log piles and other heaps of garden paraphernalia. He hot-foots it back up to the house, quietly lifts our collars out of the basket while she's out of ear-shot, and takes them round to the car. As each of us appear at the side of the house we are quietly abducted, put in the car and collared up. Then when Meg eventually strolls back up he says "On the bed". She sits there obediently to receive her 2 sweeties (maybe wondering where we are but, knowing Meg, not).

He then sneaks out the front door and we're free. See - barking! Had he explained - this is a 6 miler, do you really want to come, I suspect she'd have headed for the bed anyway. It was Sunday morning after all, and a girl likes her rest.

The forest was brilliant. We went right to the far corners where we never normally get - the big new pond, the North Downs Way, the big old badger sett, the Yew Avenue, everywhere. We were exhausted, and we've been napping ever since.

Dad headed for the allotment to pick the borlotti beans for drying to dig carrots, parsnips, beet and salsify (no we don't know what to do with it either - it's a pre-parsip root ver eaten in Roman times but we'll have to google how to cook it!) and to clear the bean ground ready for the autumn planting of garlic. Everyone was up there digging, rotovating, clearing and bonfiring after the recent onset of autumn and a bit of rain to soften the digging and make the weeds pull easily.

Hope you're enjoying your weekends

Deefer