Sunday, August 07, 2016

An adventure with George

'Let's go and explore today!' I suggested to Husband.
'Nah, you can go. I'll do some weeding.'

So George and I set off to follow the Bishopston Valley and Pwll Du Bay walk as described in the Gower Coast walks leaflet I'd acquired somewhere on my travels.

It's a fairly basic sort of map, the sort even I could follow. You'd think.


So off we went.
According to the signpost it was 2 and a quarter miles to Pwll Du Bay. 'That won't take us long,' I said to George. 'People can run a mile in a minute.'

Some three-quarters of an hour later I was wondering:
a) how I'd managed to miss the clearly-marked View Point*;
b) what had happened to the stepping stones**;
c) if we'd ever reach the sea.

We did. But by then I'd realised that we had to be somewhere else soon and we wouldn't have time to paddle or even admire the view for longer than it takes to take a photo to prove we got there.

On the way back George said, 'It was four minutes.'
'What was?'
'The mile. Roger Bannister. Not one minute.'
'Oh, that explains why it took us longer than I expected.'

Roger Bannister also didn't have to avoid huge muddy puddles, climb steadily up a steep slope for five minutes, or scramble through nettles and over rocks.

And I have to say that reaching the sea was the result not of my map-reading skills - the deficiency being in the map not me obviously - but of my tunnelling - no, wait, that's not right - channelling my inner outdoorsman and realising I probably needed to go downhill and follow the river to the sea. Helped a bit by the occasional signpost. Okay, frequent signposts.

Very lovely walk though.


Apart from aforementioned 5 minute hike up the side of the valley.
I'm not resting, George. I'm taking a photo.

Incidentally, thanks to the wonders of FitBit I can tell you that on the return journey, uphill, I covered the ground at the speed of 1 mile in 22 minutes. Which actually I think is pretty impressive.

* I can only assume it's a winter only view point.
** There is a bridge about where the stepping stones may have been supposed to be possibly maybe. So maybe they were replaced?






2 comments:

Leslie: said...

I love how you and George communicate! I do talk to Tegan all the time, but our conversations are never as fascinating as yours and George's. lol

Liz Hinds said...

He's an unusual dog, Leslie!