What started out to be what we thought a pleasant stroll admiring the changing colours of the trees turned out to be a nightmare
Have you ever gone for a stroll through the woods, taken a wrong turn and spent what seems like hours trying to get back on track - or the very least find a clearing ahead and a road back to civilisation? This happened to us yesterday.
What would normally be a twenty minute stroll, lasted 1.5 hours!! The trees were getting thicker and darker, not a bit of sky to be seen and at one point Mr M said lets go back to where we think we went wrong. Definitely a no no. I just wanted to be out. A jogger who obviously knew the woods well, did not even know the name of the road where we'd left our car but insisted that there was a road ahead if we just kept going! Ahead seemed to go on forever and getting very damp and muddy.
At last I could start to see daylight and yes - a clearing in the woods. Yay! However, it was nowhere near where we'd begun our walk and so had to put the sat nav on the phone to see where we were - a mile away - and so our walk, instead of being perhaps a mile in length max, turned out to be 3.5 miles (as tracked on my phone app Map my Walk).
Foraging was the name of the game and after I'd scraped the mud off my boots and had a well earned cuppa finally managed to put this together for my dining table.
Moral of the story? Stick to the path - even better, buy the darned thing!!
Thankyou for all your lovely comments dear friends. See you again soon.
Had the same experience on a walk we took while in England, we had help from a jogger too. Ended up a 5 mile walk, it was raining and so we took a bus back to our car.
ReplyDeleteI'm sorry you got lost. I have absolutely no sense of direction, so know only too well just how frustrating it can be. Your table centre piece is very nice though, and hopefully makes up for the fact you walked all those extra miles. And I meant to comment on your last post and wish you well in your writing course!
ReplyDeleteWe had a walking day like that and we had a map. We walked almost double doing nearly 8 miles. We could hardly move the next day!
ReplyDeleteMore often than not, forget to take the map which can be quite essential as we follow new routes around here! So glad you rediscovered your car and found some treaures on your long walk! Sarah x
ReplyDeleteBlimey Patricia! Lucky you had the sat nag on your phone how scary! Lx (L. Gill)
ReplyDeleteOh dear, that is awful, especially if night is coming on. A similar thing happened to me about six months ago, not in the bush but in unfamiliar streets. A 30 minute walk went well over an hour back to the car, and I also had to use the iPhone sat nav to get sorted. Love your Autumn table arrangement, which is beautiful. x
ReplyDeletemaps on mobiles are a blessing, good job you had internet connection though!
ReplyDeleteYes I've had this experience in Norsey Woods when I was a teen. I got so lost we eventually found the railway and followed that hoping it would bring up back to somewhere we knew. Luckily there was less fencing and risk of trespass in those days!
As for sticking to a path you know - not for me. Following unknown paths can lead to adventure and unknown meetings. Even if you do have sore feet!
Point taken! Lovely autumn decoration. I tried to make one using mini squash. It looked good but now I see I need a candle in it.
ReplyDeleteOh, yes I know that feeling well having had that experience a couple of times and feeling totally lost and disorientated not knowing which way to turn or which path to follow. Glad you found your way out and got home safely. Your seasonal table decoration is lovely:)
ReplyDeleteThat sounds like one of the tricks my husband gets up to - oh! yes, we will just go down this way and cut out that corner - suddenly we are lost. This happened to us in the Austrian Alps and I was worried that we would miss the last cable car back down into the valley, and our sons were young at the time. It can be frightening, but glad all was happily resolved for you in the end.
ReplyDeleteThat was a long walk.
ReplyDeleteGlad that you eventually found your way back.
I am not partial to entering woods.. well, really, never been brought up near woods.. its always been open spaces.
I wouldn't like to have been in that situation, your cuppa was well deserved.
Your Autumn table decor is lovely Patricia..
xx
I love that "buy the darned thing" I know how you feel! Sometimes you do wonder don't you. However, your arrangement is beautiful!!! Not sure that it needed the great long walk, but I am sure that you enjoyed it really!! Hope that you did anyway. Glad you found your way home again to show us the fruits of your labours! xx
ReplyDeleteI'm so sorry you were lost Patricia. I had the same thing when my friends and I went to mushroom hunting. No one remembered where the car was left and where we had to go to. I had been very scared. It took us some hours to get out. I love your table decoration!
ReplyDeleteHave a nice weekend!
My scary forest walk was a few years ago; I had arrived at a lovely cottage to spend the weekend and once unpacked, I decided to take my dog for a stroll in the nearby wood. No proper paths, just trails where other feet had trodden. My dog loved it, dashing around, sniffing, exploring . . . then I realised it was getting noticeable colder and the pretty shafts of sunlight had disappeared. We turned back, but of course there were multiple trails and I had no idea which ones to follow. It took an hour of heart-banging, panicky stumbling through dense trees which looked so menacing in the twilight. I kept thinking that if I didn't make it back to the cottage, nobody would know; I would have to spend the night in the forest; I wasn't dressed for a cold night out of doors. Crying and terrified, I eventually came to the edge of the wood and thank heaven I recognised the churchyard I had passed in the car earlier. Once back to the cottage, I resolved to avoid the woods for the rest of my stay. And I'm still not able to enter a wood that doesn't have a proper path.
ReplyDeleteThat happened to me a few years ago as dusk was falling, Autumn leaves had covered all the paths and tracks and I lost all sense of direction. B Baggins and I eventually found our way out by following the faint sound of distant traffic. I'm comfortable in woodland and regard the trees as friends but like Rambler I wasn't prepared for a night in the woods.
ReplyDelete