Hexthorpe, Warmsworth, and Balby

I'm getting out of the house as often as I can and going for the longest walks I can manage without using public transport whilst the social distancing regulations are in force. I'm arriving home and feeling quite tired and am therefore glad  to be getting back; because of this I'm seeing my house as a sanctuary rather than a prison as I previously did.

I had a bad day last week when my temporary support worker came to visit me; I ended up hyperventilating and getting quite distraught, distressed, and despondent because I'm not allowed to travel anyway or see my family and friends and told her that I didn't know if I was desperately trying to cry...or not to cry. I was feeling much better when she came on Thursday...and I feel much more positive about my attitude to the lockdown at the moment. I don't like the lockdown at all though and totally disagree with it.

Today for the first part of my walk I walked to Mill Lane on the edge of Warmsworth and then took a footpath I've not used before, one that I thought I would have been using last week but ended up taking another path  by mistake.

It's been very windy, a lot of the leaves have been blown off the trees and as I was walking through the park at Hexthorpe it was like an autumn day with the amount of debris on the ground.

I stayed on the right bank of the river all the way to Conisbrough Viaduct.

My route took me underneath the motorway bridge and two railway bridges going across the Don Gorge first though.

I didn't need to cross over the viaduct, I still needed to get up to the footpath and cycle route at the top though. There's not a gently sloping path up at this side of the gorge, only a choice of several steep dusty scrambles with a lot of loose soil and stones to contend with. I still went part of the way onto the viaduct though to take some photographs.

I started my return journey to Doncaster by following the route of the old railway line to a location called Warmsworth Halt - I was able to take some shots of the watertower from a different angle as I walked along this stretch.

I made my way over to Lord's Head Lane and walked down  to the old railway bridge - there's a path there going along this abandoned railway...it's a different one though to where I'd been walking previously. I hadn't brought a map, I thought I wouldn't need one, and so I didn't realise that the route was blocked up ahead by the A1(M) motorway, so I had to turn back adding a few hundred yards to my distance walked; I also tripped up twice over brambles and cut my knee...so it was a painful mistake.

Once I'd gotten back to the road I had to stay on tarmac for the rest of the way home, about three miles, but I was able to spend a few minutes chatting with a friend maintaining a safe distance in his front garden. He doesn't seem to be bothered by the lockdown at all.

I arrived home just as it was starting to rain, not something I was expecting.