I've not been able to get away to go walking this week because of a couple of routine medical appointments; it's all good news though - nothing for me to worry about.
The weather today has been fine since mid-morning; initially not very good for photography...but things did improve - I was keen to try out my new [secondhand] camera for the first time. So far my assessment of the camera is that it isn't as good as the other one which I lost; it especially seems to struggle a bit under low light conditions.
Tomorrow's weather forecast is for bright sunshine all day, so I'm planning to go to the Peak District and take plenty of photos...there wasn't really a lot to point my camera at today.
I waited for the rain to just about stop and then walked to the bus station and caught the first bus heading in a northerly direction. It was the Pontefract bus, which I travelled on to Norton. I got off a stop too early for the walk I'd been planning as I was travelling on the bus, and so had to walk down the village street for a short distance until I reached the first footpath - a snicket between the gardens in a housing estate.
It was only a few minutes and then I was walking in the countryside, heading northwards towards the River Went, which marks the boundary between South Yorkshire and North Yorkshire. It was still drizzling a bit but I could see the better weather approaching from the west.
I used the very narrow footbridge and followed the river upstream to Little Smeaton, and then along the road to Kirk Smeaton, the village that's the furthest south in North Yorkshire.
After visiting the churchyard and eating my sandwiches I retraced my footsteps back to the Pontefract road, which I then walked along for a few hundred yards until I took a footpath northwards again, to Womersley.
I walked through the village, heading east, then south east as I joined the footpath that would eventually lead to Walden Stubbs. There was a wooden footbridge I needed to cross over which was old, broken, rotten, mouldy, rickety and rather unsafe - it creaked and moved as I slowly, and cautiously stepped on it.
I obviously arrived safely at Walden Stubbs, but got lost beyond the village; the path was at first very well marked, but then it wasn't - I had to jump over a deep and wide drainage ditch...and landed in some nettles.
I wasn't sure how far north I was when I reached the main Doncaster to Selby road, but after studying the map decided that there was more likely to be a footpath heading where I wanted to go further north, than further south. I wanted to minimise the length of time I was walking along this busy and dangerous road with no causeway, and not much of a grass verge in places either.
The path was pretty much where I was hoping it would be: after about a mile I reached a couple of farms at Balne - Balne is nothing more than a collection of scattered farms and houses across a quite large area. I then walked along a narrow country lane until I reached my next footpath, but decided to chicken out because of three inquisitive horses, an electric fence, and a very muddy field - it wasn't really any further continuing along the lane.
There was a good view of the East Coast Main Line as I was walking towards Fenwick; six of the seven trains I saw were diesel - I don't know how unusual this was, if at all, but I would have thought that the majority of the trains using this stretch of track would be electric.
I didn't go into the main part of the village, instead I turned right and walked down the road to Askern, and then took a footpath that's a short cut across the fields.
I had twenty minutes to wait for my bus back to town, but I arrived at the perfect time to pick up a couple of very cheap sandwiches from M&S and three large roasted chickens for a fiver from the butcher's...oh, and also to get a good view of a cat fight between two gangs of young women at the end of my street.
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