Lovely Probus extended walk last week. Beautiful weather! We revisited Hackfall woods, near Grewelthorpe, repeating a walk from about three years ago.

A visiting speaker from the Woodland Trust at one of our recent Probus meetings spoke about it glowingly, so it seemed right to do the walk again,

The walk didn’t disappoint. It’s a five mile walk through the woods – down to the river Ure, stopping at the numerous follies and features that make this place such a treasure, before looping back up the side of the valley to a ‘mock’ ruined castle.

The previous walk had been in the autumn, rather muddy underfoot – much better this time, though even after this dry period that we’re in currently there were a few genuinely muddy spots.

The paths are well signposted, so the chances of us getting lost were …. smaller!

One lovely feature is a large pond, with a very large fountain that could be started by cranking a handle. Spectacular!

Then we got lost. Fatally not ‘walking the plan’,  having planned the walk, we went off on an interesting diversion. Very pretty stream and waterfall, a beautiful path, disappearing into bluebells and the wild garlic ground cover. A scramble up a steep slope took us back to a ‘proper’ path, sadly the wrong side of a gate with a ‘no admittance’ sign on it! uh oh!

We safely negotiated the rest of the lovely walk, and had a nice lunch at the Sawley Arms with four non-walking Probus colleagues.

It’s good to be alive!