Pitstone Windmill to the Base of Pitstone Hill Rambling Success (Circular Walk) Friday Post Part 1

Today's post has 2 parts, depending what you fancy reading- I couldn't seem to get them o mesh properly into one post, so you get two today. If you want to read about my walk, you can stay on this bit, or if you'd like to skip to learn about the slings and arrows of making a birthday cake for a one year old (as I had to do last week), then you can find to that here. But for the walk, see below...

In which I manage to get to the base of Pitstone hill without being rained on, and enjoy some peace and quiet from a grumpy baby in the sunset and see some nice views.


Ordnance Survey: Explorer 181
Time: 60 mins
Distance: 2 miles

I will confess, this is one of those walks I forced myself to do. When the weather was good this week, I was busy doing other things (like taking the Chap for his MMR jab), and when it was bad I was free but stuck in the house. I was also supposed to go for a walk with a friend this week, but due to my general tardiness in looking at the bus timetables and communicating, it didn't happen. I hit 4pm on Thursday, and was pushed out of the house to wander about by a grumpy baby - if I put him down, he wanted to be picked up. I picked him up, he wanted to be down. He'd claim he was hungry, but refused all food offered. You'd take him out of his highchair, he'd cry at being hungry. I couldn't win. I went out.

Pitstone Hill viewed from the old quarry

I'm very glad I did, because it was sunset, and slightly sunny, and a very pretty time to go for a walk. Starting at Pitstone Windmill, cross the field, turn left at Vicarage Road, right down Church Road and across the old Quarry, left up to the roundabout, cross the road and over the stile into the wooded path at the base of Pitstone Hill as in my walk to Tring and my failed walk towards Bulborne and the Grand Junction Arms. The sky was clear, the weather cool but not too chilly, and the light made everything very pleasant.

Normally, I dislike January, and February is four weeks too long at the best of times. This year, it's so incredibly mild it feels like Spring, and I'm missing out on the winter blues. It also helped that the sun was shining. What I do like about this time of year, however, are the bare branches of trees against the sky. I love the way it looks.

Instead of turning right out onto the road through the kissing gate after 500m or so, I continued on the path bearing left and beginning to climb Pitstone Hill. One of the nice things about walking at this time of day is that you have a natural timer set against you with the sun going down. I watched the shadows start to climb up the side of the hill through the trees (As opposed to The Shadows, who do something quite different). After a gentle climb, a gate appears in the undergrowth to the right. Go through this and continue down a green lane along the side of the hill heading for Aldbury. As you continue, there are some nice views towards Tring, particularly at this time of the day. The sun had just set and the clouds had gone pink, although sadly my camera refused to pick it up too well. Pretty, though.

About 1k down this route, after it has turned into a untarmaced white road, you come to a place where a few paths lead off either up the hill or towards Aldbury. I followed another route- the signposted public bridle way off to the right. This leads you down onto Station Road. Turn right and follow the path, passing the turnoff towards the Grand Union canal and Tring to the left, and go through the kissing gate back into the woodland and the base of Pitstone Hill.

View of Pitstone Hill through the trees

From here, it is a case of retracing your steps back to the windmill. Whether or not you choose to lie on the floor and wave your legs in the air with your father like inverted loons when you get home is between you and your God.

 Things I Learnt

• Walking as the sun is going down is not a disaster for you and a baby. It was good for encouraging me to keep a pace up, and also the sky was pretty.
• I knew this one already, but a grumpy baby who treats the offer of breadsticks as if they are poison while in the house will happily eat all of them while being taken for a walk in the sling.
• Waving your legs in the air is, apparently, hilarious.

Coombe Hill Birthday Circular Walk

In which I take the Chap for a walk in the fresh air for his birthday, think about how having a baby (ie, childbirth) is not as bad as people make it out to be, think about how actually having a baby (ie, in your house) is a lot harder than all those advertisers pretending we float past on a lily pad while wearing pastels are making it out to be, and admire the trippy woodland.

Ordnance Survey: Explorer 181
Time: 1 hour and a bit

Distance: 3 miles

Rating: Easy-Moderate Walk (a little map reading, very windy, a lot of mud)

Determined I was going to leave the house and not get my walk rained off, and inspired by a the book Chilterns Teashop Walks sent to me by Geekysweetheart, I decided it was high time I had a look at Coombe Hill. A picture of it is on the front of my Ordnance Survey map, and it's one of those places I've looked at for a few years and thought 'must go there', so I thought I may as well get on with it.

Safe in the knowledge that I would have cake to make up for my exertion, I decided to do this walk on the Chap's birthday. He was one year old this week, and that has lead to a lot of reflection and general assessment of the year between his father and I. We've decided that he has passed his probationary year and will continue within his employment as our son. On the whole, phrases like 'bloody hard work', 'I see what you are doing, and it is good', 'bloody hard work', 'completely knackered' and 'bloody hard work' passed our lips, mostly once he had gone to bed and we were quietly dealing with a bottle of champagne that needed drinking.

In fact, I think it is fair to say I was in labour for about 10 months or so - the actual act of getting the Chap out was hard work, but in many ways the labour that came afterwards (particularly in the first 6 weeks) was far, far worse. Hard bloody work, as Dick-Read asserts in Childbirth Without Fear (an interesting aside - did you know that the 'agony in childbirth' promised by the Bible is a mistranslation? The Hebrew words 'etsev' and 'itstsabon' are synonyms, but one got translated as 'hard work' in relation to a man farming and the other got translated as 'suffering' when it came to talk about chidbirth. It was a marvellous book to read in preparation for labour - although being a bit dry in parts and slightly quaint in its views every now and again, knowing about fear-tension-pain cycles and how the best way to have terrible contractions is to say to someone "The next one will be really bad, you must be brave" was really helpful.).
Coombe Hill has its own car park and a nice, obvious entrance gate, so I went through that and walked on the path that went straight across the middle of the field. Although I went further afield, this whole area would be fantastic if you have an off-road pram (or have a child who doesn't mind a bit of jiggling in a normal buggy) - even now, at the wettest time of year, the ground was pretty firm and there are a fair few packed-earth paths. Follow the path through a patch of woodland until you come out onto the wide grassy area and follow the obvious route towards the war memorial.

People seem to delight in telling you how awful childbirth is when you're going to have a baby. No-one ever tells you how funny it is. The ridiculous things my friends have done, such as shouting "THREE! TWO! ONE! RELAX!" in a manner that to everyone else seems anything but relaxing, or taking the mouthpiece from the gas & air out to pronounce "I haven't been this pissed in ages.". The favourite one from my labour was in searching for more towels to protect our carpet, I sent my husband into the cupboard to find an old towel that I knew was in there. I could feel the contraction coming, and just as it began I saw my husband turn around holding one of our best towels. "Is this is?" he asked, and with a contraction just starting to bite I was lying on the bed proclaiming "Nooo! Not the ones from John Lewis!".

Follow the Ridgeway
to Coombe Hill War Memorial

I meant to follow the grassy field all the way to the memorial but off to the left I saw a path heading through gorse bushes towards a pretty impressive view, so I followed went that way and found myself on the Ridgeway National Trail. I also found the views, which are pretty impressive.


I turned right and followed the Ridgeway up to the War Memorial, where I found some more views and a Welshman whose birthday it also was. He had taken the day off to take some photos, and had been pleased to find that someone he knew was listed on the war memorial, so he was taking some photos to send to his old regiment's history people. He kindly took a picture of me & the Chap with my camera, but it was too windy to be any good, really - I had too much hair flying about.



Continue to follow the Ridgeway around the edge of the hill - it's conveniently signposted by black posts with the National Trust acorn on.

This path leads you out of the designated National Trust Coombe Hill area. I left through a metal gate and then crossed a bridleway sunken into the hillside. Through a second metal gate, I continued slightly downwards towards Bacombe Hill.

By this point, I got the sense that maybe the Chap was a touch peckish. What could have given this away...?

"...or I'll eat my hat"

Marmite rice cake provided (the latest unexpected baby delicacy - but when I fished the first one out of the packet the other day his eyes lit up like a Hobbit declaring "It comes in pints?" and he has been a firm fan of them ever since) and the hat safe from chewing, we continued along the Ridgeway until you come to a fork - the Ridgeway goes downhill to the left, and an unmarked path looking like a sheep trail goes to the right.

I took the right hand sheep trail and followed this round a scrubby group of trees to effectively do a U-turn so I was then following the top of the rise along the treeline. Not far along this there is a wooden gate in a break in the trees- I went through this and then took the muddy path to the right through the woodland.

For a lot of this year, I have found dealing with the Chap really, really hard. Mostly because of sleep deprivation. For a long time he completely destroyed any semblance of quality of life that I had, and it has only recently I have felt like I have begun to get it back. For a long time I felt like I was sort of stuck. I found that I had a lot of conflicting emotions around being somebody's mother, but I found it really difficult to talk about any of it for fear of any of the slightest suggestion that maybe I don't love everything about being a mother would be indicative of me not coping. The concept of demonstrating 'coping' was very important to me for a long time, but I haven't thought about it for what feels like so long now, I think I must be fine. But I was terrified people would think I had not formed enough of a bond with my child, was being self-indulgent and generally the sort of person who should be slapped right onto the Safeguarding database so everyone can peer at my child's progress and judge me on it from now until the end of time.

 Basically, I think it boils down to the fact that this baby shit is _hard_. It's way harder than I thought it was going to be, and that's because I don't think anything can actually prepare you for the full on relentlessness of it. To quote Caitlin Moran (as oft I do these days),  'The parallels to war are multiple: you wear the same clothes day in, day out; you keep saying, hopefully 'It'll all be over by Christmas'; it's long periods of boredom punctuated by moments of sheer terror'. The problem is, to say that child rearing is hard is expected, but to say you're not enjoying it is perceived to be an appalling affront to the very heart of motherhood. You! Not enjoying being woken up three times a night! Not enjoying having your hair and flesh repeatedly pulled! How dare you! Get on the database! You can tell people about isolated events that you dislike, but to actually sum up the whole activity as quite a cavalcade of unrelenting shit is somehow Not Cricket.

But there's the other side of the coin, because while, on the one hand, it is unrelenting shit, it's also lovely. There's a tiny little chap who wriggles round the floor and sticks inappropriate things in his mouth and learns all the time and is really happy to see you and lifts up his little hands so you'll pick him up and who you love with an extraordinary intensity.

But at the same time, he had, for a really long time, shot my quality of life through both kneecaps. A mother, we are taught to expect, is Selfless in caring for her child. How dare I resent not being able to go to the Opera any more! I should welcome the repetitive round of feeding and cleaning, because it is all For The Good Of My Child. How dare I find it boring!

Actually, I don't find it boring, not all the time. I like his enthusiasm for sticking things in his mouth, I am amused by the faces he makes, by him smearing himself in spoon-food, and by the damage four teeth could do to a slice of cucumber, the the destruction eight teeth can wreak on an apple.  But some days, playing with blocks is still playing with blocks, and I'm a bit old for it to be truly stimulating.
And now I feel comfortable to say all this, or at least to put it on the Internet, and I don't really think it means I'm a bad mother. Some people might like to think that of me, but hey ho. There's a Canadian website called Bad Moms Club (missing the apostrophe, I know, but it's them not me), so called because one of the main things you have to deal with  is that someone, somewhere, really does think you're a bad mother. And while it shouldn't matter, to be honest, it does matter to most of us. I don't think I'm over it, but I can say all this stuff about how I didn't like this or that and I know people will pop up on Facebook or somewhere and say to me 'yes, yes I felt that too', and that has really helped my sanity. And let's face it, sanity can wear pretty thin when you've been woken up at 12, 3 and 6 for months on end.

Anyway, this woodland. It's a funny one. The trees have been coppiced and (probably due to the handsome winds that blow around the top of the hill) are very... well, wiggly. I don't know if it was the day I was there and the light, but the colours were really weird - the bronzey orange of the leaves on the floor had some strange effect with the green algae that grows on the trees to make them seem almost like they were glowing. I hadn't taken anything, I promise. The colours were really kicking out.

Squelching along this muddy woodland path will ultimately lead you back to the Coombe Hill car park. It took me longer than expected because it was so muddy when I was there, but it was definitely better than retracing my steps.

Things I Learnt

• Oof, it's windy up there.
• I had forgotten my desperation for a lot of the year to demonstrate 'coping'. It involved doing my hair before I went out and pretending everything was fine. Pretending that I could be arsed about losing the baby weight. Lots of stuff felt unreal, as if when we were complaining about stuff we were acting out parts, and none of us really felt anything. People felt oddly interchangeable, possibly due to repetitive initial conversations with women in Children's Centres that I would never see again. Going to the Sling Meet has helped. Having a lot of people sitting round going "Were you the weird one in your postnatal group too?" "YES! I talked and everyone else just sat there looking at me like I was crackers!" is oddly reassuring...
•  I am, as I always knew, not really a baby person. Now the Chap is one, I am delighted. For the past couple of months, he's been a great age. This is what I wanted- to have a child, to produce a person. And even though he will grow up and disagree with me and slam doors and bring inappropriate people home, that will all be part of him being him. Which I think will always be better than the tiny baby stage, even when it's horrible.
  
  It's been a long post, this one. Thank you if you're still here with me at the end :)

Aldbury to the Bridgewater Monument (Circular Walk)

In which I have a leisurely wander from the village of Aldbury up to the Bridgewater Monument and back, don't stop for a cup of tea because the Chap was a-napping, and wish you a festive furry fu-fu.

Ordnance Survey Map: 181 (Chiltern Hills North)

Distance: Approx 3 miles

Time: 1 hour
Rating: Easy-Moderate Walk (hills & maps & mud - oh my!)

On my previous walks around Aldbury I had seen signs to the Bridgewater Monument, so I have been quite keen to join the dots of The Aldbury Circuit Part I & Part II and the Ashridge Estate. Also, The Chap has been running yet another mild temperature (the average child has 12 colds a year, I think I read in the NHS Birth to Five book), and so a trot in the fresh air is always good.

This time I did not abuse the good nature of the Greyhound pub car park, but instead parked 100 or so metres beyond that in the recreation ground car park, where a few other people were starting off on their own walks - although they seemed to be heading more towards the Ridgeway than in the direction I was going.

Come out of the car park and turn left, walking down the road for about half a kilometre. It's quite a narrow road, but it's quiet with it. In due course, after passing a natty wrought iron gate on the right and seeing a large white country house hotel through the trees on the left, you follow the public bridleway signs and turn right through Stocks Farm and head gently upwards.

This bit through the farm was pretty muddy, so it was a case squelching for quite a long way. I reckon with a bit of tenacity of upper body strength you could do this walk in the summer with a pram, but in the winter  it would have been pretty dire. As it was, I still had to go pretty carefully as I'm always a bit concerned about slipping over and squishing the Chap on landing. He was oblivious, of course - by this point he had nodded off.

It being Christmas and the season of eating, I had thought a lot about weaning this week. Particularly as we had a pre-Christmas family dinner in which the Chap kicked off in a particularly impressive way (we later discovered it was probably because he was ill). He's not a big eater - we've had the health visitor in who announced him fine, and to keep doing what we're doing and he'll pick up on the food eventually. But yes, the way he can ruin a dinner is pretty stressful when you tend to use the preparing and eating of meals as a stress-relieving activity. I wrote a whole post about how, when your relationship with food is pretty messed up at the best of times, weaning can be pretty trying. However, I want to be enjoying Christmas dinner without all of my family-in-law peering at my extra helping of turkey and thinking 'hmmm', so it's not going on the blog yet. Maybe in the new year.

What has pleased me greatly this week, however, has been pubic hair. No, really. This is the sort of thing that pleases me. To my shame, I have finally been sucked into one of those weird half-reality half-soap opera shows, set in Liverpool and tastefully titled Desperate Scousewives. It's worth a look for nothing if not the eyebrows - they look like they've been drawn on with a ruler and a biro. Anyway, a couple of the girls on that were discussing how one of them had had laser hair removal on her - ahem - 'bikini area'. "Imagine being an old woman with a bald Minnie." the other commented. Quite. Why would you want such a thing? Let me nail my colours to the mast as being from the Caitlin Moran school of pubic hair;

"I now believe that there are only four things a grown, modern woman should have: a pair of yellow shoes (they unexpectedly go with everything), a friend who will come and post bail at 4am, a failsafe pie recipe, and a proper muff. A big, hairy minge. A lovely furry moof that looks – when she sits, naked – as if she has a marmoset sitting in her lap. A tame marmoset, that she can send off to pickpocket things, should she so need it – like that trained monkey in Raiders of the Lost Ark"

How to Be A Woman, 2011

There is no dignity in being a grown woman with a la-la like an eight year old. And there certainly will be no dignity in it when you're eighty.

And before I continue on with my walk, let me continue publicising my shameless fangirl crush on Caitlin Moran by suggesting you  watch her opine in the attempt to flog her book:

I love her. I just need to say that. I love her.

Ahem.

The Bridgewater Monument at the Winter Solstice.

The path really was quite muddy, and as you head up into the tree-line it also gets a little steep. It's not too bad, but it took me longer than necessary while toting nearly 2 stone of baby up a muddy incline. As this incline begins to flatten out, you shortly come to a point where the path divides. Take the left hand hand fork (marked no horses) and head through the woods until you pop out onto a wide mobility trail which shows you are now clearly on the Ashridge Estate. Well, that at the Bridgewater Monument peering through the trees at you.

I had intended to stop at the cafe here for a cup of tea and a piece of cake, but the Chap was asleep and I didn't want to wake him, so I decided to save the calories for later and continue on my way.

Cross the field in front of the Bridgewater Monumnet as if you are heading to the cafe, then turn right down the mobility trail. In a few hundred metre this also diverges, so take the right hand fork downwards to head back towards Aldbury. This really is quite a steep incline, so watch your feet!

So yes, the reason why pubic hair has pleased me this week is that - apparently - it is coming back into fashion. Or so Eva Wiseman told me (me personally, of course) on Twitter, and she has striking hair, so it must be true. There's a pleasing article on jezebel.com that you can read by clicking this link. If you don't want to see any (tastefully done) muff shots, then don't.

I am heartened at the thought of a festive furry backlash. I was also heartened by a recent report on BBC's Woman's Hour that touched upon recent 'Muff Marches' held by the campaign group UK Feminista regarding the rise of 'designer vaginas'. Now, waving my 'I have birth vaginally and had a third degree perineal tear' flag (handed out in theatre, sometime in between the start of the suturing and the point at which they start talking about you as if you're not there. If you really want one, I'm sure you can pick them up on Ebay very easily. Amazon have probably started selling them, to be honest), I would like to look this allegedly rising trend firmly in the eye, poke its pigeon chest with my bony finger and advise it most strongly to leave be my cha-cha-cha. There will be some women who do need labioplasty - if they find bits of their anatomy interfering with sex and making it uncomfortable, for example - but the vast majority do not. This sort of behaviour, and the normalising of it, just plays on fears, to steal a phrase from Germaine Greer, that "No woman wants to find out that she has a twat like a horse collar". There is enough censuring about the female body from the outside - we don't need it to get internal as well. I'm not tying bows on my bloody kidneys for fear someone may want to have a little look. There will be no cravat upon my pancreas. My cervix does not need a hat. Back off, Harley Street. Back the hell off.

Anyway, hurrah for a festive muff, I say. Maybe I should have hallooed that as I once again entered the village of Aldbury. I didn't, sadly. I merely turned right, towards the centre of the village, then right again past the duck pond, the Greyhound pub and down the road again to the car park.


Things I Learnt

• Gosh, it's dark this time of year.
• And muddy. Don't look at the rain on your path as you leave and think 'oh,  my jeans'll be fiiiine', because  I was coated in mud to my mid shins.
• Pubic hair pleases me. It really does. And the word 'merkin' is always welcome in Scrabble.

Pitstone Redundant Church to Ivinghoe Church in the snow

In which I adhere to the phrase 'there's no such thing as bad weather, just the wrong clothes', wrap the Chap in fifteen layers of clothing, and enjoy the winter wonderland.

Ordnance Survey: Explorer 182
Distance: 1 miles approx
Time: 30mins

Rating: Easy-Moderate Walk (would be easy if there was no snow!)

True to the weather forecast, we woke up this morning to a festive dusting of snow. This is something about the British - we get really excited by weather. The sort of snow that the Canadians - or even the Germans, or other central-European types - would laugh at, the British work ourselves up into apoplexy over. This is probably because whatever weather we get, it will usually only last a maximum of a week before it'll all change again.

Today's short stroll (it was cold, after all) started at Pitstone Redundant Church. After admiring it being all snowy, you retreat down Church Road until you can turn left onto Vicarage Road. Maybe 50 metres down this road you will see a sign pointing through a hedge declaring that Ivinghoe is 3/4 of a mile away. Cross the road and follow the sign through the metal kissing gate and across the fields.



A festive post box



I want to talk to you about something. Something serious. Something that is currently on the minds of many parents across the country (or, at least,the ones I've been speaking to). Should you have it in the house? Is it better to introduce these things gently to your children at home, responsibly? If you don't have it at home, will your child run amok when they discover them outside your house? Or should you conclude - to directly quote from a Facebook comment - that  "If you hide these things, they only go and do it somewhere else!".

Of course, I'm talking about that most contentious of issues for the parents of toddlers and cruising babies - the Christmas tree.



Our Christmas tree for 2011.



It being that time of year, our minds have turned to decorations, and indeed, have promoted something of a Great Christmas Tree Debate. If you have very small children, do you have a Christmas tree or not? We have opted for the 'not' this year. We have a tree, but it's a little fake one and roosting safely on a bookshelf, away from grasping little fingers. Indeed.as the ChapDad observed, we have a tideline of Christmas - we have decorations, but they're all above the height to which one small, cruising child can reach.

However, mention a Christmas tree to parents of toddlers and pre-toddlers, and suddenly the conversation turns as if we're discussing drugs or alcohol. And we're all wildly justifying our choices, again as if the issue was more serious than just a tree. I assert the Chap is only just beginning to grasp the concept of 'No', and I don't want to spend all day every day directing him away from the electric-lighted, glass baubled spiky thing. Others declare this sort of behaviour unnecessarily fussy (and why, they may do so. If they also want to come round my house and spend their days directing my son away from the tree, then why, they may do that also and I shall get on with the stuff I need to be doing). Another friend gave me a long and heartfelt explanation of how they decided to have a tree because the rest of their house was so well child-proofed that they thought a small period of intoning "NO touch!" as their child heads for the baubles would be good for their child to realise some things are out of bounds.



The Chap peers at the snow



But the conversation is so contentious, so liable to prompt debate and counter debate (particularly on social media), and earnest reasoning behind the choices that have been made, it suggests to me that while on the surface we're talking about trees, underneath we're talking about something else. What is the conversation we're all really having here? Is it discipline? Is it about giving your child boundaries? Is it about child safety? ChapDad found an interesting article earlier this week in the Washington Post about parenting choices :

"Have you buckled a child into any kiddie gear lately? Here’s what you see when you do: WARNING: DEATH or SERIOUS INJURY CAN OCCUR.

Thanks! I hadn’t fully appreciated human mortality until I became the whole world to this helpless creature I love to an aching degree, and now vivid images of his death fill my mind every time I dutifully employ the safety equipment that now constitutes the baseline obligation for responsible parents but that didn’t even exist in my parents’ day!

Fulfillment is impossible unless people filter these worst-case scenarios from daily life, and most parents do override the sense that harm to children is epidemic.



I can haz camera?



But that takes willpower when California’s missing child makes headlines in Rhode Island, and when your gentle days with your newborn are punctuated by dozens of encounters with



WARNING: DEATH

WARNING: DEATH

WARNING: DEATH "

(Read the full article here.).

I don't really know what conversation we're all having. It seems a mixture to me- something about child safety and some sort of judgement about how helicoptery your parenting is. It's just no-one is saying anything overt. We're just all sitting about giving long and impassioned speeches explaining our Christmas tree choices. I hope to God no-one opens the star/angel/fairy can of worms - we'll here all night.

Pitstone Windmill

Ivinghoe

Ivinghoe High Street

The gate

Really, when everything gets snowed on it all looks fresh and clean and exciting and festive. As I reached the end of the field and was about to enter Ivinghoe, I was so excited I even took a picture of the gate.

 Go up Green Lane until you come to the High Street. Turn right, and in a little over a hundred metres or so you will be at the end of the walk at Ivinghoe Church. It is still covered in scaffolding, and not even the snow can make that pretty. Hey ho.

Things I learnt

• Wearing big woolly slipper socks inside your wellies is a top plan.
• The weather hood on the Ergo baby carrier is a really good idea. It did get a bit wet in the snow, but it dried out pretty quickly.
• I now feel super-festive!

Totternhoe Quarry (Circular Walk)

In which I admire the chalk landscape around the Totternhoe Knolls, see lots of pretty coloured berries and unburden myself of my fear of putting The Chap in nursery. Sorry for getting all maudlin. It happens now and again (indeed, it happened the other day, and my husband made me google pictures of Aidan Turner until I shut up. "Stop reading the interviews!" he cried. "Just look at the pictures of the hot man.". To my shame, I must confess I quickly became distracted from Mr Turner and we ended up watching videos on The Hobbit blog, which I think illustrates why my husband and I get along so well).

Ordnance Survey: Explorer 192
Distance: 3.5 miles approx (not sure yet as I've misplaced the map. Will get out a bit of string when I find it and will let you know).
Time: 90mins (still feeling a bit ill)

Rating: Easy-Moderate Walk (Bare minimum of map-reading!)

I should have been going to Occupy London this week, but from Monday - Tuesday I was so full of cold that it was all I could do to leave my bed, let alone traipse round London I was fine by Wednesday, but the thought of venturing into the capital while the strikes were on and risk being kettled with a baby did not appeal. Ideally, I wanted to avoid a conversation that would sound something like this:

"Let me go, Officer! I was just going for a walk!"
"Past Occupy London on the day of the strikes, madam? What's your job?"
"Well, I'm a teacher."
"Member of the Union, are you?"
"Well, yes, but honestly-"
 "Grumpy about your pension are you?"
"Well, yeah, I'm going to have to work until I die and frankly, I've seen the way 16 year olds treat all teachers over, say, 60, and I think the last 15 years of my career as I work up to 75 are going to be horrific."
"So, you're a teacher, a Union member, sympathising with the strikers and you just happened to be walking past Occupy London on the day of the greatest mass-Union action in your lifetime? And you're not involved? And this one's got bells on it, darlin'".

So instead I left the ChapDad heading off towards to picket line and went and hid in the Totternhoe Quarry/ Knolls. Actually, I'm doing a lot of hiding at the moment. I'm not sleeping well, and it's almost completely to do with the fact that, when I return to work, I am going to have to put The Chap in nursery. It makes me feel sick. It terrifies me. I have a barely-contained panic about it. In fact, when I think about it I find myself sort of... running in my head, looking for doors, looking for a way out. It stimulates my fight or flight, and it all happens in my head.

I parked in the Totternhoe Knolls car park (follow the brown signs from the B489), which also has some picnic tables. These must be appealing when it's not December.

Leave the car park from the back (through the gap in the brown fences) and climb the steps. As you come through the fence, turn right up the rise for a very short distance  When you reach the main path, turn left and then take the next right down a wide-ish byway that takes you in between a field on the right and part of the nature reserve on the left. Continue down this road for about a kilometre.

The ploughed field and a chalk cliff left from
quarrying, looking all lunar landscapey.

I like walking. Walking is simple. It drowns out the noise in my head. You have the world, and you have a picture of the world on your map, and you look at the picture and see how the world matches it and then you go, step by step by step by step and it is all so beautifully simple. The fear is simple too, of course. I feel so panicked about having to leave the Chap in nursery that some days I fear I will start to scream and if I let that happen it will never stop. It's strange to try and explain it, because my work is part time, and what with the ChapDad sorting out his hours it looks like the Chap will only have to be in nursery for a day and a half. A day and a half! How ridiculous to get wound up about it! It's nothing! We went to a Bumps & Babes thing on Monday and within ten minutes he was on the other side of the room, as far away from me as possible and investigating something with wheels! Frankly, put us in a room with other babies and I may as well not be there - there are much more interesting people to be poking in the eye. But what it feels like is that there's something in me hardwired, something evolutionary in me that tells me this is all so wrong. My mother sat in a pub after dropping me off at University for the first time and cried into her half pint, and now I understand why. Because there's this thing, a voice in my head that when I start thinking about putting the Chap in nursery cries mybabymybabymybabymybaby. Something primeval in me is crawling up the walls and telling me that to leave my child is all wrong.

But there's no choice for us. The mortgage doesn't pay itself on the ChapDad's salary. Or at least, the mortgage does, but there's no heat or light or food or Counsel Tax or petrol or electricity or water or travel.

Pass by the wooded(ish) rise on your right an continue down the road until you reach a byway that heads off to your right. After doing this, you'll be on this road for quite some time, so you might as well settle down to plod, plod, plodding and enjoying the pretty berries standing out on the now leafless hedges.

The weird thing is, I panic over a day and a half of The Chap in nursery, but if I think about it, and I did have a choice, I think my choice would be to return to work. Money no object, I would happily tootle off to work and leave the Chap with a childminder/nanny and not have a second thought about it. It's the concept of nursery that frightens me. The more my life has continued, the more education has gone away from teaching people stuff for the joy of it and more standardised tests, more measurement, more institutionalisation. Every level of development is assessed and fretted over. And I feel sick that my child will have to go into that, particularly so young. Everyone's child goes into the machine and 4, and that I'm sort of prepared for. When we were thinking about having a baby, what we'd do with it when I had to go back to work wasn't something we even thought about, to be honest. It's fine! I thought. By one, he's won't even be a baby any more, he'll be a toddler! He can hold his own for a day. And yes, it's probably true. But the voice in my head cries mybabymybabymybaby, and it will cry that from the first time he goes to nursery, to his first day at school, to the day he leaves home. I never expected having a child to feel like this. I never thought it would be so... raw...

One grey view you pass by on
the long road around the knolls

Finally you leave the chalk grassland behind and start to head down a tarmaced path along the side of a green field, heading towards the outskirts of Dunstable. The path forms a dog-leg to the right, and shortly after this you come to a cross-roads from which you can see the Ivinghoe Beacon and the Chiltern's Gateway Centre.







At this crossroads, turn right and continue along this path. When you come to another crossroads, turn left heading towards the big white chalk cliff you first saw at the beginning of the walk, although now from this angle it looks like this.




When you reach the end of the field, turn right and climb up the rise that has had part of dug away to make the cliff, enjoying views of the plain in one direction and Dunstable and the Downs in the other. The rise isn't arduous, and we were soon at the top and on our way down. As you descend, you will recognise the path you met at the start of the walk. Turn left down the road you came up and pop back through the gap in the fence to descend the steps back to the car park.

Dunstable and the Downs.

Things I learnt

• Being a grown-up sucks. There's a lot of fretting about the world and the country and our situation in general to be done.
• The fact that my go-to name for this area is the 'Totternknoll Hos' and my husband's is 'The Rottentrolls' clearly indicates which one of us has spent more time in nightclubs, and which spent part of their youth painting the occasional Warhammer figurine.
• Chalk is grey, berries are pretty colours, and wandering around near both is a generally good distraction. Better than moping around at home, anyway. Although should Aidan Turner wish to come round and offer some distraction, I could see if I have a window in my schedule...

The Aldbury Circuit, Part II

In which I manage to make it all the way around the village of Aldbury, enjoy the (possible) last of the sun and ponder elaborate interpretations of In The Night Garden.

Ordnance Survey Map: Explorer 181
Distance: 5 miles approx
Time: 90 minutes (which, considering the last time I tried to do this it took me 75 mins to do half the distance, shows the lack of faffing around in this walk).

Rating: Easy-Moderate Walk







Both The Chap and I were a bit headcoldy, so it seemed a wise move to get us out into the sunshine (while it's still visible!) and get some fresh air into us.

Parking again outside The Greyhound pub, pass the duckpond, cross the road  and head down Trooper Road.  This retraced my steps from the quick exit I made when I was in Aldbury in September. At the end of the road, go through a metal kissing gate and follow the field boundary until you meet and pass through another gate.

Once you have done this, turn right up a gently rising field, again following a field boundary until you pop out onto the road. It is not a difficult stretch of road-work - there's an easy bit of verge you an leap on when cars go by, and you're not on the road for very long, anyway. Shortly up ahead there is a path leading away from the road and up a slope - take this until you reach a cross-roads. At the cross roads turn right along a dirt path, giving you views of gently rolling countryside and sheep. It's the countryside that rolls gently, not the sheep, you understand. Sheep generally do what sheep do, which is stare with the dull-eyed vacancy akin to youths sodcasting on buses.

In the distance, popping up over the trees is the odd green cup on top of the Bridgewater Monument.

Meanwhile, in the 1800s...
"Duke of Bridgewater! How do you want to be remembered?"
"Well, let me think, Carruthers... I built a lot of canals. Don't you think that would help people remember me? There's the name and the canals, they sort of go together..."
"Steering committee isn't too keen on the canal angle. Not with all these rumours of Stephenson's kettle on tracks. We need to think big!"
"Bigger than canals?"
"I think we need something punchier, sir. Something for people to really rally around."
"What do you suggest, Carruthers?"
"I think we should stick a massive green cup on top of a pole, sir!"
"Capital idea! You read my mind!"

As I passed by the sheep, I saw some men walking in the distance, one of whom was in a very jaunty red jumper. I quietly approved that others were taking advantage of the nice day. Carrying on up the path, I lost sight of them and all of a sudden I saw the red-jumpered fellow again, but closer this time. They seemed to be walking round in circles - were they lost? Had they not made offerings to Keith, God of Those With Poor Map-Reading Skills And A Dubious Sense of Direction? Would they like to look at my map? Then, a horrifying thought came to me - maybe these were the murderers my mother had warned me about! That's what they were doing! Walking about, waiting. Waiting to come and get me! Oh, what an impetuous boob I had been!

Then I rounded a corner...

Ritual significance, possibly religious...?

 Or, they could just be golfers.

From here it was a simple case of following the path until reaching the road. You are led along a wooded path down the side of the golf course for the most part. It was one of the last few sunny days we are likely to get this year (although for the past month people have seemed to suck their teeth and say "Well, the weather's going to change at the end of the week..."), so it was nice to be out in it before winter finally appears.

It's a funny old thing, being a parent. You start off with all these rules in your head that you've acquired from somewhere, only to jettison them when you discover the practicalities of the things you'd say you'd never do. I still think it's probably best to avoid Godfrey's Cordial, similar laudanum based soothers or gin (for the baby), but on the less extreme end of baby-calming, I had said I would never use a dummy. I think we had one in use from the end of about the first week when we discovered it worked.
Similarly, television. We lived without a TV for around 3 years in the days before digital streaming onto computers, and now we technically don't have a TV - we watch pretty much everything through the laptop. We like to wag our fingers at the influence of television at a fair few social ills in our house. My child? Pfft! No television until they're at least 3! And then strictly rationed! Like the gin bottle, it was officially marked not for babies.
Until, of course, I discovered the wonderfully soothing effect that In The Night Garden can have on a small, teething child who has been making that UUuuuuhhhh. UuuuuuHHHH. UUuuUUUUuuuHHHH. noise of General Discomfort for, ooo, three hours. UUUuuuuhhh. UuuuhhhHHH. Chewy toys, cucumber, teething gel, going for a walk - none of it worked. UUuuuuUUUHHHH. UUuuuuhhhh. In desperation, I went for the nuclear option; the Ninky Nonk.

Silence.

Say what you like about In The Night Garden - it works. It is famous for having a slightly soporific affect on children, but I am also interested in the soporific effect it has on grownups - ten minutes of Derek Jacobi talking soothingly and counting Pontypines and I was a lot calmer, as was the baby.

This is not the way to the Garden in the night.

Mention In The Night Garden to parents, and they have a sort of wide-eyed expression of one who has glimpsed Nirvana (unless you're the sort who would like to hiss about how it's rubbish and doesn't teach children how to speak properly. If you'd like to do this, I raise you Bill & Ben The Flowerpot Men, The Clangers and Pingu. I'd also advise you to go away and read this and then come back with a structured argument as to why it's rubbish and then I will listen to what you say. More often than not, the people who do the hissing have never wathed a full episode...). I certainly wouldn't let The Chap watch TV every day, but if he is cranky and any amount of playing, reading, watching the washing machine or going for a walk hasn't worked, a spot of Makka Pakka (OCD or misplaced Christ complex? Parents I have spoken to are divided) works a treat.

Flushed with success as I reached The Greyhound, I decided I had the time, inclination and agreeable baby to keep going, so I decided to complete the circuit following instructions as for The Aldbury Circuit Part I (To be honest, I did do a slight variation where instead of taking the first left after the first benh, I carried straight ahead which cuts out all the uppy-downy business and just pops you straight out onto the road. It should be pretty obvious if you look at a map. I think.).

Passing the duckpond again, The Chap woke up and peered about, but he seemed quite jolly and happy to continue, so I was able to carry on up the hill without having to turn back.

One of the joys of In The Night Garden is the plethora of elaborate interpretations that parents seem to glean from it. Our children just seem to be amused by Upsy Daisy dancing - one friend, however, asserts that the whole of the programme is the fevered fantasy life of Iggle Piggle creating a cast of characters to make him feel less alone as he floats, hopeless and abandoned, upon the winedark sea. For the rest of us, it just seems to pose questions. Is Makka Pakka's OCD under control? No-one needs to wash that many faces and stones in a day. Why has no-one noticed that the driver of the Ninky Nonk appears to be drunk? Who is driving the Ninky Nonk? Why do the Tombliboos hang their trousers on the line without washing them? Are the Pontypines drawing state benefits? Upsy Daisy can inflate her skirt so she shows us her pants ("No better that she ought to be!" cries my husband) before doing a dance. Is this the sort of female role model I should be presenting my son with?!

In short, I enjoy it very much. And as long as I am sitting there with The Chap and chipping in with Derek Jacobi and waving at the Haa Hoos, I don't think it can do that much harm - if I left him on his own watching it while I went away and did the washing up, I wouldn't be so happy with the situation. And anyway, if I did that I wouldn't get to count the Pontypines.

I finished the walk down Trooper Road and back to the car via the stocks and whipping post. I still have a few ideas as to who we could pop in there should Aldbury wish to rejuvenate this historic site...

Things I Learnt

• When it comes to parenting, never say never. Except, perhaps, when it comes to Godfrey's Cordial.
• Aldbury is a lot closer to Ashridge than I think it is.
• Makka pakka akka wakka mikka makka and, indeed, moo.