I didn’t manage to get out on New Year’s day due to the general awfulness of the weather so it was a nice surprise to wake up to a fine morning today and get out for a walk. I’ve decided to to repeat my 100 walks goal this year as it was getting a bit tedious having to walk the same place at weekends. So instead I’m going to go for an even thousand kilometres this year. I reckon I walked about 750 last year so that’s a good improvement if I can manage it.

Anyway, this morning was a very nice way to start and we all went for a family walk to kick the year off. The low winter sun gives long shadows even at 11 o’clock.

There is so little colour in the woods at the moment that even the bit of red in these ivy leaves catches the eye. Of course the gorse is still flowering away and the holly still inexplicably has berries. There must be plenty  else for the birds to eat that they are leaving the holly berries alone.

This is the wildest part of the walk and it is looking quite bare at the moment. You can barely see the path at this point in the summer but right now it is getting quite muddy.

We had a grand walk in the forest to try and get rid of a few Christmas calories and I fear there will be quite a few to go yet. So for the first steps on a long road for the year, I reckon on the longer of the loops that we did to day as being about 4.5 km, so that leaves me with 995.5 to for the year.

4.5km