A muddy walk

We went for our second walk of the new year today.  We set off in a different direction this time, up the hill from our house. This walk had some steep bits, although wherever you walk in our town it's difficult to avoid hills.  We headed up the lane in the direction of our local Scout Camp and Activity Centre. There are some lovely views when you get to the top.

Walking through the Scout Camp brought back memories of when our daughters were in Brownies and Guides.  Noticing some recent developments of obstacle courses we thought of our 2 grandchildren who live in this town.  One of them is in Brownies and the other has just started in Beavers. They're going to have great fun here in a year or two!

Leaving the Scout Camp we came to the river which looked fairly calm.  

There are always lots of damaged and decaying trees along this walk which are quite interesting.

This one had fungi growing on it.

 The name of this section of our walk is Allsprings because of the number of natural springs in this area.  It's always very muddy in places.   Here in Lancashire we have had an amazing amount of rain in December so today it was really wet, muddy and squelchy, in fact some places were really difficult to cross.

This stile was swimming with water from the stream, but it gave us an opportunity to clean our boots!

Our boots were still very muddy when we got home. Some drying out and cleaning is required!