Well, we’d hardly be cycling, now would we?  So my fellow fish out of water and I went for a long winter wonderland walk instead of the ACG ride that had been mooted.  Bearing in mind the effort required to advance through the snow whilst staying upright, this had the potential to be a fairly good substitute, albeit one sadly devoid of coffee stop potential.

I met GB at the Kings Wood car park – having walked there along the Strawberry Line from here.  And there’s no apostrophe on the sign so I don’t know if the Wood belonged to one King or many – just in case the grammar police are reading and tutting under their breath at the lack of correct punctuation.

Anyway, the Strawberry Line was fun, because watching rabbits trying to run away over thick snow is amusing.  They have this odd bounding motion more reminiscent of how a kangaroo moves than their usual skedaddle.  Quite a few of them couldn’t be bothered with that, and just crouched where they were in the hope that I would go away.  Which of course I did – I’m very obliging like that.

Crossing the A38 was unsurprisingly easy as, at that time, all but the odd ejjot in a 4×4 were staying home.  However the climb up to the car park proved challenging, as the ice underfoot was both crunchy and slippery at the same time, and the last stretch was definitely the road less travelled.

I was early.  He was late.  Or maybe he was on time, and it’s just that I was early?  Not that it matters.  Off we went in the direction of Crooks Peak.  Now usually on a Sunday, this route has something of a motorway feel to it – but not today.  Today it was all ours although, to be fair, we weren’t the first to have gone that way.  It wasn’t as cold as I’d expected, the early morning wind had gone, the views were great, and we had the place to ourselves.  Very cool.

It was uncannily like cycling.  The trodden path, such as it was, was one person wide…so GB sat on my wheel, leaving me to lead the way *grin*.  And again, to draw parallels, the flats were easy enough, the ups were hard work, and the downs were treacherous.  I only fell over properly once – but there were plenty of near misses to be had.  I may have an interesting bruise on my left hip in the fullness of time, and I appear to have pulled a muscle in my back.  Mind you, it was kinda fun – and landing on thick snow hurts a darn sight less than landing on frozen tarmac! 😉

We didn’t make it as far as Crooks Peak, coming down instead to Compton Bishop, where the roads were like the Cresta Run, making life all the more interesting.  Always good to have a challenge.  From there we followed the nicely slushy main road home.  We had a bet on as to the number of cars that would pass us but we both lost dismally as we had failed to take into consideration the foolhardiness of people absolutely having to be somewhere else.  Today’s Prize P*llock award goes to the 4×4 that went past us and turned right across in front of us, with the driver on his mobile phone.  Priceless.

By the time I got home, having detoured for the Farmer’s Market and a Sunday paper, I’d been out about 2 1/2 hours, which is fairly respectable I feel.  Hey, it’s not riding, but it’s a darn sight better than doing nothing at all! *grin*.  Now, where’s my coffee?