Having foregone the chance to enjoy a nice meal with some cool jazz played by Mike in a restaurant in Gatley, I’m afraid I wasn’t amenable to cancelling or postponing tonight’s ‘last of the summer’ evening walk in Deepest Cheshire, despite a drizzly afternoon. Anyway, that option had been rejected earlier on the grounds that there was no other mutually convenient date.
So the Famous Five all dutifully turned up at the Parkgate Inn in Over Peover. The cheap beer went down well and the start time of 7.30 drifted to 8 o’clock as we waited expectantly for others who didn’t arrive. Then we assembled for the above photo call after which Richard and Jenny went home.
That left Sue, Andrew and me to enjoy a route adapted by Andrew to be mudless and short. A very good route it was too.
A fair amount of wildlife was encountered, including this friendly red squirrel.
A giraffe looked on, intimating that she would like to give Andrew a hug.
Meanwhile, a big pussycat was stalking an innocent looking horse that had been spooked by the appearance of a gorilla. The neatly mown lawn is testament to the bravest gardener in Deepest Cheshire.
The real fun began a few minutes later near Merrydale Manor when the horse, frightened by the tiger that was being chased by the gorilla, disturbed a pair of love distracted Canada Geese. The geese flew off, but one of them flew through a barbed wire fence next to our path. It flapped frantically as we approached but it was well stuck and we felt would never have got free of its own accord.
Despite a dislike of these geese, we were obliged to come to the rescue. The frantic bird calmed completely as soon as Andrew wrapped it in his coat. He and Sue held it whilst I wrestled with the impaled wing. It refused to slide off the wire. After a few minutes we decided to rotate the bird through 360 degrees. Luckily we twisted it the right way and the wing eventually came free. The bird was then freed for another attempt at the fence, which this time just damaged a few more feathers. It could fly, but not very well, and at least it could join its friends. Amazingly it appeared to have managed not to evacuate its bowels during the stress of the rescue, much to Andrew’s relief!
It wasn’t far then to the Parkgate Inn, where the inmates were a little surprised to see us again, and were even more surprised to hear that we’d been for a walk in the drizzle when we could have been enjoying the cheap beer.
Here’s the route – 4.6 km in just over an hour.
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Making things happen.
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