A reduced service on the trains today due to more industrial action and so I travelled on the bus to Sykehouse, one of the villages to the north of Doncaster.
I got off the bus before it reached the main part of the village; it waits for several minutes here and so I decided to start the walk a bit early and straight away headed down the lane to Topham. Just beyond Topham it was snowing may blossom, a wonderful experience for me - I just need for a grand Strauss waltz to be playing on the radio to make it perfect....and someone to dance with of course! I'd just tuned in to listen to the pre-amble to the cricket on Test Match Special but immediately switched it off and put my transistor radio back in my pocket. I wanted to enjoy the moment and not hear former players explaining the intricacies of reverse swing, which end Jimmy Anderson should be bowling from, and what cakes and pies would be served up for the commentary team during the luncheon break...a couple of minutes later I was lapping it all up though and looking forward to Geoffrey Boycott's theories about what's gone wrong. [Sorry about a bit of indulgence here, but I love cricket...and Test Match Special is something I very rarely miss. I listen to it on many of my walks, even if I don't usually mention it.]
I crossed over the River Went and briefly entered North Yorkshire until I reached the East Riding of Yorkshire only a few minutes later.
Next up was the Aire and Calder Canal.
I only entered the eastern outskirts of Pollington and there was nothing to see until I approached West Cowick. At the entrance to the village there's a shooting centre where there was a festival being held today - there seemed to be a lot of people attending who were riding motorbikes with three wheels.
Snaith is pretty, but it's a very small town...no more than two dozen shops I suppose.
It was a pleasant walk along a bridleway to East Cowick and then it should have been an easy route south to Thorne. Things don't always go to plan though; where on the map it looked like there ought to be a pedestrian underpass to enable me to cross beneath the M62 motorway there was merely a dead end, resulting in an extra couple of miles being added to today's mileage tally. This has happened to me before and I wish there was a way for Ordnance Survey to indicate this on their maps.
After doing my detour along the road I walked along the canal towpath for a mile or so and then made my way back to Thorne to catch the bus using stretches of road or walking right alongside the River Don where there was a footpath.
No comments:
Post a Comment