Group Walk To Askern and Haywood

Another local walk today with the autism group. It didn't go quite as planned though; two people were suffering really bad with hayfever and so we cut the walk short, returning back to Askern by the quickest route. The weather was good though, probably better than forecast.

We met at Askern Boating Lake; a pleasant spot - there are shops, toilets, and a cafe...and swans and radio-controlled boats to be photographed.

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After leaving Askern the first part of the walk was across scrubland. We then crossed over the freight railway line and continued across fields towards Haywood.

The next stretch was along a dead straight farm track. We stopped at one spot when someone noticed that hundreds of brown butterflies were fluttering around a couple of bushes in the hedgerow: I was looking at the map at the time and so would probably have walked straight by without stopping otherwise. A couple of the members of the group took some care and time in adjusting the settings on their cameras to try and get some good results...I didn't bother, I'm not that good a photographer. At the end of the track the footpath petered out at a farm; fortunately the farmer's wife was very helpful in providing us with directions.

Just before reaching Haywood we had a difficult section walking along the side of some woodland; the footpath was overgrown and a couple of stiles were broken.

We sat and ate our sandwiches on a grass verge in front of the church - a couple of people mentioned that the church is now a private residence. The architecture of the building looked rather unusual...I shall have to have a look online and see what I can find out.

As we were eating our lunch people who'd brought binoculars with them were looking at a large bird in the sky, some sort of bird of prey...there was no agreement as to what it was though. It was at this point that we decided to cut the walk short and head back to Askern - by a different, and hopefully less difficult route. We still ended up walking across open fields and areas where there was a lot of pollen to irritate Michael's and Oliver's hayfever though.

Not far from Askern we got lost again. Navigation was difficult, the paths were overgrown and poorly maintained, and there were no signs. We ended up at an alpaca farm...but just followed the drive down to the road.