the corner office

It's been something of a year, with comings and goings and dramas and a ton of stuff needing doing, and I hadn't been out for a while. So when Ronwen asked "what would you like for Father's Day?" my reply was, "to go out for a walk".

And a nice walk it was, too, so much so that later in the day I said something like "it was such a great walk, and I took so many pictures, I might even turn it into a blog post." Having created expectations, one must not disappoint. But after exporting and resizing a few photos, I realised it's going to be quite a long one. Here goes...

I left early. It's been hot recently, and trudging through the suburbs, it was already getting unpleasant. I was starting to have second thoughts, but I set them aside by the time I reached Goddington Park.

A pretty park - huge green spaces and plenty of trees, alone and in clumps. Only downside was zillions of dog walkers. Every time I tried to take a snap, out popped someone with their dog. This was about the only shot of the park on the day that didn't have someone in it (a dog walker was just behind tree on the left and emerged a few seconds later).

But the park spills out into a farmer's field on the other side, and I'd soon left the dog walkers left behind, except for one. A young woman crossing the field, approaching me, heavily tanned and tattooed, her dog with a red cowboy scarf, on a leash. She went wide through the field as we passed each other, which didn't stop her dog from being ornery and barking at me. "Is the hat," she said apologetically in an Italian accent. She was the last person I saw for a good few miles after that.

Another field or two, and then this.

I love these footpaths. I get an irrational thrill out of crossing fields at an angle. A sort of guilty pleasure, you have permission to cut across the field, you don't have to politely skirt it. And the directness of them a reminder that these are paths people have probably been trodding along for centuries.

And into the woodland on the other side of the field. The woods old, cool and still, fallen branches and tree trunks, covered in moss.

Out of the woods on the other side, a slight hill, and a chalk meadow. One patch, covered in poppies.

This is an area I know quite well. The path takes me past a farmhouse. I remember this farmhouse because it's old and run-down, on the side of a country lane, and the first time I walked past it, last year or the year before, the farmer passed me in his huge modern tractor. As he drove up his driveway, kids came running out the house, so excited to see him. I remember thinking that no matter how ramshackle the farmhouse, it was a happy family that lived there.

A bit further along, I'd still not seen any humans. Then a path I don't remember having taken before, past stables and a few ladies getting their horses ready, then more fields with more horses. Up another hill and a long, tree-lined dirt avenue. I sat in the shade, on the trunk of a large fallen oak, eating an apple and looking out over the hills, the City and the Shard in the distance.

And then, back to somewhere I did recognise. The far point of the day's walk. A few houses, marked on the map as being alongside a Baptist Burial Ground (more on that some other time, perhaps). I've been this way a few times - it's the junction of a good few paths, coming from different directions. The cool thing is that just as you get to the houses, you can turn back down a footpath which cuts across a field. In previous years this was a wheat field, and the trick was that you couldn't see the path through the wheat unless you were looking straight down it.

This year, the field has rapeseed. And this is a picture of the footpath, I promise.

I've done plenty of walking through dense foliage, feeling a bit like those soldiers in war movies, wading through swamps with arms held high with rifles overhead, except I don't have a rifle and I'm just trying to avoid the nettles and whatnot. But this was the first time I'd done that going through a rapeseed field, having to push through the plants, some of which were taller than me. Sort of like an alien space plant massage. Great fun.

At the other end of the field, a broken stile, a few stalks of wheat (from previous years, I guess), nettles, and straight ahead, a long, long path stretching across the fields to get home.

Eventually, the wonderfully named Bleak House Farm, and this old shed, which I've photographed from just about every angle in every season.

The sun was up, and it was really hot. Through Derry Downs (below). I'd come through Kynaston Wood (on the right). These woods were different to the woodland I'd been through earlier. Dense tree cover, no undergrowth on the woodland floor, and hot and stifling.

By now, I was just keen to get home. My thoughts had turned from enjoying the countryside to wondering whether the Polish deli on the high street was open (spoiler: it was), and if so, whether I'd be making bad choices (spoiler: I did. Many of them).

Across the last field, a final photo for luck, and through suburbia again. The sun was baking down. The roads shimmered, resigned to the heat, but the cars and houses looked mutinous.

And with that, the high street, the deli and a bunch of pastries and cream cakes in my backpack. Another hill or two before I was home, a warm welcome for myself (and the pastries), and I was ushered off to the shower while tea was made.

As Father's Days went, not bad at all.