Wendover Woods (circular walk)

In which I visit the highest point in the Chilterns, enjoy a nice walk in the sunshine and get really narked off at some film posters.
Map: None Used - we just followed our feet
Distance: 4k (ish?)
Time: 1 hour

Rating: Moderate Walk (some very steep areas)

Finally, a Monday with a walk! I got there in the end...

So, I found myself with an impromptu day off (in that I cleared the leave with my line manager two days before I had the day off), so ChapDad and I decided it was a good time to explore Wendover Woods.

The Cafe in the Woods

Wendover Woods is run by the forestry commission, and has excellent facilities with a good cafe and clean changing facilities to go with their play equipment and bookable barbecues as well as a Go Ape, yet we don't often go there. Partly it's because you have to pay for parking, and the other reason is that their 'designated trails' are appallingly signposted. They have lovely leaflets printed with all manner of jauntily coloured trails, and we have never managed to complete one successfully - we always lose the route. This makes it much more annoying than, say, the Ashridge Estate, which puts you next to some woodland and seems to announce "there you are, mate - best of luck". Wendover Woods, however, suggests it will provide some walks for you, and then promptly leads you astray.


This time we were feeling relaxed and so decided we would have a wander and just see where we ended up, which was nice because it meant we got to enjoy a new walk that we hadn't been on before.

Cairn marking the Chilterns' Highest Point

Starting at the Cafe in the Woods, head behind the toilet block onto a flat mobility trail. Not far down this you come out into a car park - follow the marked easy access path that is also signposted 'Chilterns' Highest Point'. Down this path, passing the bookable barbecue areas, you will see a Cairn. It is a sadly unexciting affair, as it really lacks any views to speak of (for those I would suggest Coombe Hill or Ivinghoe Beacon). However, it is nice to know that you've reached the highest spot, even if there isn't really a lot to see.

Sometimes, however, there can be too much to see. Journeys to work can be hard enough at the best of times. Whether it's a day I'm in the car or on the bus, each have their own niggles and trials. Slow traffic, trying to find enough seats, hot, grumpy toddlers, it can all add up. What I then do not need to see are one of two film posters that are, to express it politely, really getting on my wick at the moment.

Every now and again, film posters annoy me. For months my journey to work was blighted by having to look at the Life as We Know It posters on bus stops. They are posters that, frankly, let everybody down. Honestly, Warner Bros, we're not angry, we're just disappointed. And as for you, Katherine Heigl - you seem a nice girl, but I saw the truly dire The Ugly Truth and strongly suggest you find yourself a better agent who will get you out of these crappy roles.

But really, this poster filled me with rage. I was moderately-to-heavily pregnant at the time, and my ire was more easily raised than usual (if you can imagine such a thing... my ire is pretty trigger-happy at the best of times). The subtext (although let's be fair, is it really all that sub? It is more the plain text of the poster) that men are themselves children and that women are delighted to spend their lives chasing them delightedly while they forever evade her clutches. Honestly, people, none of us do well out of this poster.

The trees are quite tall.

And, indeed, had we been trying to follow Wendover Woods'  set trail we would not have done well either. After seeing the cairn, we followed the path around to the right until we popped out on the road that exits the area. I don't know if the mobility trail suggests you follow this road back to the car park or if we were supposed to carry on straight over (the route we chose to take) as there were no signs. Having crossed the road, the path leads you alongside it for a while before leading you back into the woodland and through some very long pines.

In due course, the path leads slightly down and then divided into left and right. We chose the left path, the way onto which was slightly blocked by wooden fencing designed to keep out trail bikes, and leading away from the direction of the car park. While the rest of the paths we had been on would have been fine for prams & pushchairs, the way from here definitely became unsuitable for anything more than a sling - there's lots of inconvenient roots and uneven pathways to get in your way.

Turn right, down the bridleway. As you can see,
ChapDad still favours a front carry.

We followed this pathway off into the woods for about 10-15 minutes, with me wondering every now and again at which point we should declare it quits, turn round and head back. However, ChapDad had other ideas. "I think there'll be a path parallel to this one down there somewhere" he gesticulated off down the slope. "We should take the next lateral a join it". I have long given up snorting at pronouncements like this, as more often than not, the swine turns out to be right. Lo and behold, not far after we passed an orienteering marker labelled 3V, a bridleway lead off down the hill to the right. It's quite steep in places, so care needs to be taken. This is particularly true when you reach the bottom of the bridleway and need to join the main trail to the right, as it becomes really steep here - not for very long, but enough to concern you when you've got a baby strapped to you.






However, Hollywood is never tired of churning out annoying films and posters, and recently they've managed to keep me at a gently rolling boil as the bus stops roll past. Firstly, let us begin with the charmingly titled Piranha 3DD. Now, I appreciate that as a woman in her early 30s, I am not the demographic at which this film is aimed. However, while I am not the demographic, the posters have been staring at me on my journey to work for some time now, and they are ticking me off.


There are a number of elements that distress me, and no, I don't think it's too strong a word. I am distressed by the link between sex and violence - there's the cracked sunglasses on an expressionless, porn-culture face. Should one be out of the water and see enough piranhas to reflect in one's sunglasses, I would hope the reaction would be slightly more animated than this bland, airbrushed, blow-up doll of a woman who appears to be waiting for the money shot. And that horrible tagline "Double the action. Double the terror. Double the D's." - which fishwit in marketing thought that up? Roll up, roll up! Come see this film and see large breasted women exhibit fear! In 3D! It'll be hilarious! Once you watch the trailer and see they joys of 'water certified strippers' in a park charmingly titled 'Big Wet' one wonders if the writers of this have ever heard of the women's movement. Again, I just don't think this does any of us any favours - it exploits and cheapens us all.

Having turned right onto the main trail, continue forward like this, again taking the right hand fork leading upwards when the trail divides. Follow past some impressive looking rooty trees as the trail rises until you arrive back near the car park, round the side of the Cafe in the Woods.











And finally, the last bus poster that is making me seethe - What To Expect When You're Expecting. It riles me, it really does.  I will leave aside the opinions of some of my baby-wearing friends as regards front-facing Baby Bjorn style carriers, but needless to say, some of them could write reams on how it's not doing the baby any good. What vexes me, however, and vexes me most strongly, is how the 'hilarity' of this film is conveyed. There are the women, lounging around inside the house, having a good time - like the men should be doing! And look, there are the men loaded down with babies - like women! Ha! Hilarious! Who would have thought it?!

To quote my husband, who has the mot juste on this topic:

"The great strides that have been taken by women into industries, professions and boardrooms necessitate reciprocal strides by men into the domestic sphere. These strides have been taken and are being taken in the face of ridicule from the media [...]We find this amusing primarily because a man in a domestic setting is a figure of fun. This is part of the backlash against women's liberation, in which this document is taking an active and self-defeating part. The author, in seeking to deny the cultural acceptability of a man who is capable around the house, is effectively policing the borders of women's own domestic drudgery. " (Although he said it about an email forward that went round his office - you can read the whole thing here).

"Boom!" is the appropriate response to that, I feel. Except I do not have the funding to put that paragraph on the right hand side of a bus that is currently advertising What to Expect When You're Expecting on its left. Although I would like to.

I'm not denying that the use of the Reservoir Dogs-ish walking in a line trope is funny. The use of the inhaler to replace some sort of weapon makes me chuckle. But again, it is the implication of the emasculation of man - that to look after children is a girly thing to do. Deep down there is some sort of ingrained feeling that we should all be living in some sort of Frank Miller-esque universe, where men are deep-voiced and violent, and women are all an agglomeration of the tropes of hotness and prostitutes or strippers to boot. Why is the image of men looking after their own children presented as funny? Why must the father be undermined in this way while at the same time the Western world scratches its heads at the prevalence of absent fathers? Anyone who has looked after a child for a day knows that it is mentally gruelling, so why can't we all cut each other some slack? I just hope the film doesn't turn out to be as annoying as the poster.


Things I learnt

• I have now been to the highest point in the Chilterns. Oo.
• There is more than one walk to be had out of Wendover Woods! Sadly, I very much need to be in a specific "oh, let's just wander" mood with someone with a better sense of direction than I to get a useful experience out of it.
• Piranha 3DD? Really? Someone gave them money to make that?

College Lake with a Back Carry

In which I do my first walk with the Chap on my back, find a different path to take around College Lake and continue to assuage my nursery-guilt with knitting.

Map: None Used (routes are available at College Lake if you're desperate, but it's very much a case of following signs!)
Distance: 4k
Time: 1 hour

Rating: Easy Walk
This walk was a first for me, because it was the first time I did a walk with the Chap on my back. It's been coming on for a while - I got to the end of Willen Lake and thought "oof, my back", so I've been working up to doing extended walks with the Chap on my back, and this was the first 'proper' walk I've done with him there. It takes a bit of practise to get them up there - I have found it easiest to 'Santa Toss' him over my head rather than scooting him round my side, as he's just got too tall to fit comfortably under my arm. However, I can get him up there without incident now, so long as he isn't wearing anything big like a coat that tend s to get rucked in the back and make the back of the Ergo sit a bit low, but I now know what that feels like, so it can be dealt with.

However, I still wanted to build my confidence, so I went for College Lake. It's an easy walk, it's not a long way or difficult terrain, and it has a visitor centre so nappies and so on can be dealt with.

We started as we start most walks these days - with the two of us walking. We use the reins for this a lot as the Chap can accelerate in an impressive manner - fine of you're in a flat park, but not so good if you're in an area filled with rabbit holes or on a train station or similar.

On leaving the Visitor Centre, turn left and follow the path round. It starts on gravel and then quickly becomes a packed earth path, and the Chap seemed quite happy to toddle along that rather than dashing off into the undergrowth, so I let him off his reins to tootle about in that purposeful manner that toddlers have.

Soon enough, however, he stopped and asked to be carried, so I threw him over my shoulder and into the back carry and we continued forward.

The line of trees soon breaks and you start to get views over the lake. The path splits shortly after this - the orange trail continues on the flat path suitable for prams, but we chose the purple trail bearing right and down a slope. This leads down into a tree-lined dell, and then up again to a narrow path. It's a quieter path and easier if you're wanting to see some birds or other wildlife than the main orange trail.

Also a week of firsts, I have finished my first cardigan for the Chap! I am amazed that it not only looks like a cardigan, but it also appears to be wearable! I put it on him this morning (before I had sewed in all the loose threads) and was also delighted to see that, although a bit big at the moment, it will fit him and appear to be in proportion when he gets big enough for it. I am amazed it actually looks like it's supposed to! It took weeks, however, but I'm really pleased with it. And at least it gave me something to work on while we worked our way through the Lord of The Rings extended box set.

I find knitting terribly comforting. When my sister-in-law asked why I had started knitting, the answer was simple - guilt. I hate putting him in nursery, but I find knitting helps me ignore it.

"Ah-ha," she said, in that knowing way that people with psychology degrees have. "So it's a case of 'I'm leaving you, but I've got you this."". I've thought about it, really, and that's not quite right. It's not about leaving him so I got him something. There's a world of plastic dinosaurs and cars that could fulfil that function. It's something about the effort, the activity. It's not really about the fact you get a cardigan at the end of it, although that is in itself satisfying (and surprising!). It's more about the activity; the performance aspect. If I think about it, even though I enjoy being at work (which is something I never thought I'd say, but that's what having a year's maternity leave lead me to conclude), I still feel that by going to work I am doing something unutterably selfish. It doesn't matter that we can't afford for me not to work - I think it's a case of the Terrible Shoulds. I feel I should be at home looking after him, and therefore any other choice is Doing It Wrong.

You will shortly reconnect with the main trail, and we continued along this until we saw the gate leading off to the left through the fence, marked with a 'permissive footpath' white arrow. As this was somewhere I hadn't been before, I decided to go and have a look and see where it took us.

I really enjoyed this part of the route. It feels a lot quieter than the main path, and takes you along the edge of the nature reserve through the trees. It was also completely deserted apart from a photography crew who were taking promotional pictures for the reserve, who grinned as I went past with my load.

  

In wearing the Chap as I go for walks, I manage to do what I want at the same time as feeling like I'm ticking the 'Proper Parenting' box. It was the same when we went and enjoyed the dinosaurs at the Natural History Museum the other day - I enjoyed the dinosaurs before I had a child, but now I'm not just indulging myself. I'm Being A Parent. In knitting, I perform the role of being his mummy, even if what I'm doing is just sitting on the sofa drinking beer and shouting "Oi love 'ee, Mr Frodo!" at various opportune moments at the TV. Now, obviously this doesn't mean I'm not his mother when I'm doing this, but it seems to me that again, this is a self-indulgent act when what I should be doing is watching him sleep and composing odes to his restful slumber or similar. Left brain knows this is tosh. My left brain understands that one can still be someone's mother as you cry "You were robbed of that Oscar, Mr Serkis, robbed, I say!". So, knitting is a salve to the incoherent babbling of my right brain - I am performing the act of being a mother, therefore it's fine. It doesn't matter that I am knitting because I enjoy it, or I like the challenge - if that wasn't the case, I wouldn't do it. I enjoy it, but it also helps on the occasions when he comes home from nursery knackered, goes straight to bed and I hardly see him. It's either knitting or watching little videos we've made of him and crying. I know which option is provides a more conducive household environment...

The path then leads you back onto the main route, giving you good views over the lake. We continued forward, and then took the first right hand turn. This area is definitely not suitable for prams - there are steps and gates and narrow pathways and it would all be very awkward. I like this route, however, because there have some interesting things to look at along this way. This way has information about the history of College Lake, starting with old machinery left over from the days when it was a chalk quarry and going all the way back to the dinosaurs.

We then took the path leading up and off to the left back to the main route. I also wanted to have a look around the second hand book shop that lurks about the Visitor's Centre - I am indeed one of those people who can never resist the lure of a bookshop. I have a particular fondness for women's advice manuals from pre-1960s. None exist in this bookshop, but I did pick up a nice children's book about an elephant who is pen-friends with a penguin.

Children's books acquired, we then continued back to the Visitor's Centre, then home.

Things I Learnt

• After I changed to the 'santa toss' method of getting the Chap on my back, all my back-carrying problems have been solved!
• I can knit, it seems. My next plan is for something a bit more proper than a beginner's pattern... something that involves a tension square to start off with...
• You can get a number of quite varied walks out of College Lake. When I first went, I was pretty sure it was a straight march around a circuit job, but I am glad to find that there's a good amount of choice. It's also good for building up confidence if you're not used to baby wearing for walking.

Pitstone Common (Ashridge - Circular Walk)

In which the sun comes out and my tree painting friend and I wander around Ashridge on a brief tour of some Significant Trees of Awesomeness, and I am oddly grateful to be back at work.

Map: None used (eek!), although it's on good ol' Explorer 181

Distance: 2 miles (guesstimate)
Time:  45 mins -1 hour

Rating: Easy Walk

This walk wanders through part of the Ashridge Estate, and although I've tried to make it as accurate as possible I would like to place a small health warning on this walk - as my friend had to take me off the path to show me Significant Trees of Awesomeness several times, I may be a bit woolly here and there...

Starting at door the Bridgewater Monument, walk down the left hand side of the road towards the actual Manor house. After - maybe- 200m or so you will see a pond to the woods in your left, and bearing left into the woodland there is a signposted path. This is the one we took.

The path leads around to the left and you join a wide avenue through the trees. My friend seems quite happy to wander off into the woodland in search of exciting trees, which is probably why she paints them so well. I, however, am not so keen to bimble off into the woods without a map. I really like walking through woodland, but as long as I'm with people. If I'm on my own it often feels pretty menacing - probably some old evolutionary hangup I have. Maybe I have ancestors who were menaced by wolves in the woods.

Interestingly enough, I feel a lot happier if I'm in woods with water. Subconsciously I think this may actually have less to do with wolves and more to do with my atrocious sense of direction. To me, woodland looks like woodland looks like woodland, but if you have a river, you always know which direction you came from. It's harder to get lost.

Once you're in the woods having followed this path, you get a wide carriageway looking kind of path, rutted in places with the tracks of 4x4s.

The sun was shining and it was moderately warm, our children were being quiet and everything was pleasant. We had a bit of a moan about the usual things we moan about - people who seem to present that everything is amazing with being a parent, the judgement we perceive from others if we don't seem to be towing the line. It's not that we don't like our children, we do, we think they're great, I just think we're less inclined to wax lyrical about it. I knew this woman and I would get along the day she cocked an invisible shotgun at her son who had been awake 3 times in the night. Mothers rarely do that in public. We're all usually pretending we're brave little soldiers, then going home and crying.

Of course, I am now failing to tow the line by having gone back to work part time. Society seems difficult to know how to deal with us, really. It nods in approval at us for going back to work, and it also nods that we are partly sacrificing our careers for our children, but at the same time there is the sense that society sucks its teeth at us for exactly the same reasons. All I can say is that I think part-time work is best for me. It might not be best for everyone, but oddly - and unexpectedly - I'm really grateful to be back at work. At work, there are rules. The hours I'm supposed to be there are clearly delineated, and the expectations of me are made clear. People tell me what to do, I do it, they don't give me shit. What they don't do is throw 4 different advice books at you, conflicting Health Visitor advice, and no-one spends time posting articles on Facebook about how what I've been doing is wrong.  It is, I must admit, a refreshing change. If the Chap didn't howl every time I dropped him off at nursery, I would be completely satisfied.

In due course, pass a turn off to the right and then take a marked path to the left further on. Continue along this path and (this is where is gets a bit hazy, so forgive me) I think it will eventually lead you left to one of the Significant Tree is Awesomeness much admired by my friend. This was her daughter's Castle Tree, and it sits in the middle of the path along what used to be a boundary line for the old Roman farms that used to exist on Ashridge. Standing next to this tree and looking to the left and right, you can see the bump of the earthwork that indicated the boundary lines. The trees all along it are really old and gnarled, and - so I was told - are all pretty old because, being on the boundary line, were all left to indicate... well, the boundary.

Middle right, the rooty hand clutching at the soil...

We then took at detour off the path to view another Significant Tree - heading right from the Castle Tree, you pick your way through the undergrowth to a huge rooty thing that was festooned with blue rope for swings. It's hard to explain quite how big it was. I was also particularly menaced by the fact it clearly has a five-fingered hand grasping onto the Earth. I am half convinced it uproots itself and night and wanders round the woodland.

Back on the path with the Castle Tree, we followed the path through Pitstone Common until a path marked by a post with a mushroom on it branches off it. This path bears right and I was surprised to find brought us back to the other side of the pond we had gone past about 45 minutes earlier, and lead us back to the car park. It's a nice wander, on the whole, made even more pleasant by sunshine and a spot of putting the world to rights!

Things I Learnt

• The woodland at Ashridge is all pretty new, as the land was farmed for a long time after the Romans stopped. The oldest trees are the ones along the boundary lines.
• My sense of direction, poor at the best of times, completely deserts me in woods.
• For a couple of years I have been a total wazzock with regards to Ashridge, taking the same dull path every time. I am really excited to have been shown other routes and find other things!

Startops End, Marsworth and Tring Reservoirs (Circular Walk)

In which the sun comes out and we enjoy and wander round the (worryingly dry looking) reservoirs, and I wonder if the Chap is really as bad an eater as I think he is.

Distance: 2.5 miles
Time: 1 hour

Rating: Easy Walk

Free from flu and with the sun suddenly shining, we decided to celebrate our recovery with a wander around the reservoirs.

Parking in the reservoirs car park  (£1.50 for 3 hours at time of writing) in the implausibly romantic-sounding Startops End, Marsworth, we started with a cup of tea & a piece of cake at the Bluebell tearooms (nearly £10 for two coffees and two pieces of cake! Is that the price of things these days? I nearly fell over. It's a good thing I've gone back to work if that's the price of cake these days). The Chap refused all offers of cake, but at least consented to eat one of those little caramelised biscuits that come with coffee. It's a pleasant little cafe, and we were quite excited by the bookcase of kilner jars with tea on them - always a good excuse to come back and investigate!

Filled with fat, sugar and caffeine, all three of us walked (yes, even the little one!) back to the car, where we got the sling out and then set off. Mounting the steps up the side of the embankment, we started at Startops End reservoir and followed the path to the right.

The water is still looking really low in the reservoir, which corresponds to current reports that we have a drought going on. The anglers were still out here and there, however, these reservoirs apparently being famous for producing monster bream and other fishy fiends.

Follow the route anti clockwise around the top of the first reservoir - looking to the right you get views of Marsworth, and to the left there's the reservoir and across towards Tring or Pitstone Hill, depending on which way you're looking.

Startops Reservoir with Pitstone Hill in the far distance.

Follow the path round the back of the reservoir, over a small wooden bridge and up a rise and then pop out on Tringford Road. Step over a low crashbarrier to cross the road and follow the path immediately opposite to follow to the left of Tringford Reservoir. This was a lot more full, and apparently is the thing if you're after trout. This reservoir is a lot less obviously elevated and exposed, because shortly after joining the path you go into the line of trees that surrounds it. Bear left, and ignore the path that leads off to the right in a short time, instead heading straight on.

If bird watching is your thing, there are also a number of hides, and there had been a fair few  waistcoated, bearded men with large and expensive cameras around Startops, but they hadn't got as far as Tringford. There were some pretty views from the hides, but no actual birds that we could see.

Tringford Reservoir from the bird hide

I have learnt an interesting thing this week. I went round for lunch with a friend, and  from my point of view watched her son throw food down his neck like all children who aren't my child seem to do. He ate rice cakes, all his own blueberries, then all of the Chap's blueberries, and then a yoghurt. "How marvellous to have a child that eats!" I thought. My own dear offspring consented only to eat marmite rice cakes and yoghurt while turning his nose up at the offer of fruit, cheese or chicken, before performing his usual trick of starting to whinge and flap to be taken out of his chair.

So I was interested when later the same day, the mother of this fruit-eating child posted a question on Facebook about how she was worried about the way her son will only really eat blueberries. Which makes me reconsider my perspective about whether or not I see the Chap's refusal to eat as worse than maybe it is. I'm not saying that having a child who only eats blueberries isn't something I'd wonder about, but at the same time I hadn't seen a child with a problem - I'd seen a child who likes blueberries. Similarly, I wonder if for a while I have been seeing a problem where in fact I have a child who just really, really likes breakfast cereal. In fact, my litany of 'well, my child will only eat...' has now got a bit like the 'what have the Romans ever done for us?' sketch in Life of Brian. 'Well, he'll only eat breakfast cereal. And toast. And sausages. And yoghurt. And apples. And bagels. And noodles. And exactly two  bites of broccoli, but never the whole floret. And fruit smoothie pouches. And red pepper. And individual commercial pies, like apple pies or mince pies. But apart from that, he eats nothing, I tell you. Nothing.'. Ok, so often he'll only eat two bites of something and then throw it on the floor, but things have got a lot easier since we negotiated a sign for 'all gone', which he now uses when he wants to get out of his high chair. It's a lot more preferable to the screaming, howling banshee who used to make an appearance every mealtime.

I have gone in cycles with the Chap's eating. Christmas was particularly bad. I had had visions when we started Baby Led Weaning that it would mean he would, at the age of almost one, be able to sit down and have a piece of turkey, a roast potato and some veg with us. What did he have for Christmas dinner? A shreddie. One. One centimetre square piece of breakfast cereal. Anxiety about the Chap's behaviour at mealtimes has pretty much ruined every meal for the last 6 months. Recently he has seemed to get better, by which I mean he doesn't eat any more, but we can thrust a piece of apple impaled upon a baby fork at him, and he will then wave it around or remove the apple only to try to get in on the tines again. But the whole eating thing is very stressful, particularly when nurseries start reporting what you know back to you; that yes, your son doesn't eat. It's also bad to arrive early to pick your son up to find he is, in characteristic fashion, howling to be removed from his high chair after two bites of toast. Just because he can do the 'all gone' sign and you've told nursery about it doesn't mean he is consistent in his use of it.

In some ways I'm glad it's not just me he does this to.

Weaning - to me, anyway - appears to be The First Great Test of parenting. Do you go for purée or baby led weaning? Do you let them have sugar? Sugar appears to be so dangerous that you might as well strap them down and start injecting them with heroin and be done with it. I reported to a Health Visitor that the Chap had consented to eat a bit of pork pie, and instead of being congratulated on finally getting some sort of protein into him, she sucked her teeth and announced "ooo, it's very high in cholesterol.". I'm afraid I have not been back since.

My anxieties about weaning also feed into nursery. Trying to explain why the Chap going into nursery has prompted such a strong reaction from me, I found myself saying that "the problem is that with him going into nursery is that this is when they find out."

"Find out what?" ChapDad asked

"Find out everything I've been doing wrong." I said. I don't know what it is that I have done wrong, but I am sure there are a lot of people out there with their golden Judgement Cards all ready to produce scores followed by a critical commentary from Len Goodman gratuitously using the word 'fleckle'.

People say that having a baby will find any cracks you have in your relationship and turn them into potholes. Certainly, starting to wean a child will identify all the issues you have around food and crack them wide open. Truly, I feel I am the last person who should have responsibility for feeding this child, because my own anxieties are completely clouding any rational judgement I have around food. True, since slightly before Christmas and the infamous Mugging His Mother Of A Mince Pie Incident, his eating does seem to be slowly, slowly picking up, but there are still days when all he's had are three rice cakes and 20 oz of formula. Whatever happens, though, already in my head he is The Baby Who Will Not Eat. He could eat a whole packet of sausages, a loaf of bread and a bushel of apples every day for a week, but if on the next day he complained he might just have a bit of rice cake because he was feeling a bit full, and I would be there like a shot. "See! See! I told you! Only a rice cake for The Baby Who Doesn't Eat!"

New Mill, Tring

The path leads you away from the reservoir and along the sides of fields inhabited by the occasional horse or pony. We followed the path until Tring flour mill (New Mill on maps) was in sight, and then when the path lead off to the left we followed it instead of following the map's indication of heading straight on.


The concrete path we took along the side of the field looking over towards the mill ended in a white metal fence and a padlocked gate. A path lead off to the left, but we weren't sure if that would get us onto the road, and we knew that we wanted to get onto the road to head back towards Marsworth reservoir. ChapDad asserted that of course he could clamber over the fence while his small, sleeping infant son was strapped to him. I, of course, did what every sympathetic wife would do. I stood back and took pictures.

Once on the road, cross over a turn left along the pavement. In a hundred metres or so, you will see the path you could have taken before you climbed over the gate pop out onto the road. In two places. Feel a bit foolish. Carry on until a path leads off bearing gently right. This was the same path I had taken when I had walked here from the Grand Junction Arms at the end of last year, and we carried on along this path, past some ducks in the reeds and between Marsworth and Startops reservoirs.


When you get to the end of this path, we then headed straight on and bore left along the edge of the Grand Union canal, and then back to the Startops car park.

Things I Learnt

• I am not the only person who gets wound up by their child's eating. Or lack of it.
• My son does not need to worry about his cholesterol as yet. He's one.
• All you need is one sunny morning and suddenly the whole of the 3 counties area seems to decamp to these reservoirs!

Ordnance Survey Map: 181 (Chiltern Hills North)

Totternhoe Knolls via the Nature Reserve (Circular Walk)

In which I walk through the weird yellow-green nature reserve in Totternhoe Knolls, and inadvertently turn my son into a girl by putting the 'wrong' clothes on him.

Ordnance Survey: Explorer 192
Distance: 2.5 miles approx
Time: 60mins

Rating: Moderate (some steep up and downs - a faff when it's muddy)

Well, back at work this week, and after last week's worrying over the nursery I was then presented with a piece on Radio 4 about child starvation, followed by hearing about the shenanigans of alcoholic parents, followed by a trip on a bus which included a staggering display of generally poor interpersonal skills between a mother and toddler also travelling. In short, I was reminded that maybe putting your child in nursery is not the worst thing ever. We may yet survive. I will keep you posted.

Anyway, eager to get out after last week's snow, I enjoyed a wander over Totternhoe Knolls. Starting in the carpark as with the last walk, go up the steps, bear right at the top and then left. However, unlike last time when I went through the gate on the right, this time I continued forward along the path I was on.

The path takes you up a gentle rise, and the higher you go the better views you get of Totternhoe & the surrounding countryside through the hedge on your left. Had it been a nice day it would have been lovely indeed, but it was damp and misty and cold. On a nice day I'm sure it's lovely, however.

During the snow, there was one thing I did do aside from insist the Chap walked to the shed and back - I dragged our off-road pram 'The Beast' out from under the stairs and wheeled ol' Chap-chops off to toddler group (why no sling? It was sheet ice underfoot, and while I am happy babywearing in the snow, it was so slippy I decided a pram would be better for us that day). He marched up and down with a baby walker for a bit, and then we went over to play with the wooden puzzles. There was a lady there doing a magic roundabout puzzle while he grandson drove a pedal car around the floor, and we did the idle polite chat thing. The older they get the faster they move. The problems with molars. How the Chap is really only interested in a toy that includes wheels or is a ball. By this time, the Chap was showing interest in one of the easy wooden puzzles. He picked up the circle, bashes it on the table a bit, and then neatly slotted it back in place. "Hooray!" I cried, as you do when a small child makes a minor achievement (which the Chap has now learnt, and makes a noise like the Fonz every time something pleases him). "Ah!" said the woman opposite me, "Clever girl!".

And here's the thing- I'd been sitting there blathering about him and he and his and I'm sure I'd used his name too for a good 5 minutes, but something had been talking louder than I'd been. Really very vocal. It had had an awful lot to say. It had been this shirt:

Warning! This shirt will make your child a girl!

Continue along the path - for a good while it was quite unmuddied as there is a structured surface (ish) to it. The further you go along, however, the squelchier it becomes. A few paths can be seen going off this one, but ignore them and stay on this main path. Finally, you will reach a dogleg that takes the path down the hill. Undecided about which way to go, I stood and looked at the map. I was also struck by the weirdness of the landscape of the nature reserve to the left of the path. Mossy, damp, weird teletubby-esque lumps and bumps, like a mogul field without the snow. It's either what happened after some quarrying was left to go back to nature, or the result of some serious bombing.

You're not going into the nature reserve yet, however - stick to the path, which now became very clarty with mud and I proceeded with caution down the slope.

Follow the path down the hill. It will then curve to the left. To be honest, it's a pretty dull green lane - it may be more exciting in the spring/summer, but right now it's sticky with mud, grey and pretty tedious.





Not long after, however, after the path swings to the left you find a metal gate in the hedge to your left. Going through this takes you into the nature reserve and its odd landscape. I found it strangely menacing - the sort of place you are likely to either find or become a body, I thought. Joyfully, neither event happened - we just got a bit damp, but that was the mist.

Take the path bearing slightly to the right of straight ahead (after the gate you can either go hard right or this slightly right, much like the options our government seem to be fond of at the moment) and take the path in between two knolls.

So, some time after the initial 'clever girl' incident, we went for a pub lunch with my parents. I put the Chap in the shirt again because it's sort of a rugby-style shirt, and the first time my father met him he gave him a small talk on which was most likely to be his standing leg and which was most likely to be his kicking leg, so I thought it an appropriate piece of clothing to put on my son. The Chap enjoys walking in places that aren't our house, so holding onto my hand (he can't do it without yet) he marched across the floor with that slightly disturbing toddler goose-step. A grandparent-aged couple on a table nearby cooed at him. "Oooo, you're doing well, aren't you. How old is she?"
"He's a boy." I said. They did the usual polite blustering about being terribly sorry and I made the general polite noises about how no-one can tell when they're this age anyway.
"He was wearing pink, you see." They said.
"But it's a rugby shirt!" My father spluttered.

You pays your money and you takes your gendered choice, it seems.

Obviously, this whole gender segregation of colour thing is a marketing tool - if you have a girl and buy everything with pink & flowers, if you have a boy second you'll simply have to go and buy a whole new load of clothes because otherwise he will clearly grow up to be gay and that would be appalling (someone this week said to me after I'd mentioned how The Chap was very active and allover the place investigating how "Well, you'd rather that than them being all sissyish, really, wouldn't you?", which I'm afraid got a rather firm "He can do whatever he wants to do" intoned from me.). But it pervades everything. There's an American Korean (or Korean American) called JeongMee Yoon who has done a series of photos called The Pink and Blue Project, in which she takes pictures of children with their pink or blue toys. She says "The saccharine, confectionary pink objects that fill my images of little girls and their accessories reveal a pervasive and culturally manipulated expression of femininity” and a desire to be seen. To make these images, I arrange and display the cotton - candy colored belongings of several children in their rooms. When I began producing the pink images, I became aware of the fact that many boys have a lot of blue possessions. Customers are directed to buy blue items for boys and pink for girls. "

JeongMee Yoon's Jake and his Blue Things

It's pretty staggering after a while - go and have a look at the full project so far here.

I can understand this colour-coding for children, particularly babies when they all look the same. A friend of mine said she was grateful when she saw a colour-coded baby, because then you don't have to go through the awkward 'is that a boy? Girl? If I say 'aw, isn't she cute' am I going to really offend the parent when it turns out to be a boy?'. However, looking at Jake and his blue things, it spreads beyond clothes, and it reaches a point where it's really hard to buy clothes for a boy in shops that aren't black, blue, dark green or brown (there are occasional spurts of orange, to be fair. Also, have you ever tried to find a piece of clothing for a boy that has a cat on it? Best of luck to you - girls get pink and cats, boys get blue and dogs. No boy, evidently, has ever liked a cat, ever. My child is clearly some kind of masculine feline-fondness prodigy).

What gets my goat is the way this spreads and spread until activities become segregated and it becomes a major effort to find, say, some sort of 'playing house' toy that isn't bright pink (although the Early Learning Centre do a blue iron. It's rare enough that it's worth reporting). Construction toys, similarly, get heavily marketed towards boys whereas girls get the pink treatment again, as indicated in this video that ChapDad showed me this week.

So while I'm not totally anti colour-coding per se, it's when it starts to infringe upon the activities you may be choosing to do that vexes me. There are some 'girly' things that I suck at, and ChapDad does a lot better - ironing, for instance, and folding. Conversely, when it comes to catching the live mice that the cat brings in, the ChapDad retires quietly from the room while I do a larger version of the 'spider in a glass'  technique. I should stand on a chair and fear for it to climb my skirts, I know, but I don't. Such a failure....

Back in the nature reserve, you will come to a fork - take the left hand one and you will eventually be led down the hill and onto the road. Cross the road and turn left, continuing down it until you pass a farm on your right, then take the next bridleway leading up the hill on your left. When you reach the top, you rejoin the path you started on - turn right, and retrace your steps to the carpark.





Things I Learnt

• There is something that feels a bit odd about Totternhoe Knolls. I've walked there twice and it's not that I don't like it, it just seems to have a bit of an atmosphere.
• In my opinion, you can't make children like something because it's a certain colour. You can influence a purchase, but it's the difference between me asking if something I want comes in red (which happens quite a lot), or me buying something simply because it is red (which doesn't really happen).
• I didn't like Lego as a child. I liked Playmobil. My favourite was the ghost. You could take his sheet off and move his beard up and down (such was the joy of the Playmobil beards) and attach the ball-and-chain to other characters you didn't like. His candelabra was also very useful for hosting banquets. And he glowed in the dark. Amazing! Would I have liked it better had it been pink? Don't be so silly - that's the wrong colour for ghosts to be....

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 :)