Life keeps getting in the way of walking, which is rubbish. But now it’s the last Sunday of September, and barely nine o’clock, and we’re walking. It’s just Tim and me because we suspect Jen has been out doing whatever young people do on Saturday nights, and our pace is quick.

It’s warm too, so within minutes I’m red in the face and too puffed to talk. We go right at the bottom of Horley and out along the ridge above Bramshill. We cut across the Drift Road towards the Stratford Road, then on towards Balscote. We pass the beautiful garden hidden in the valley and then loop by the quarry and come out near Wroxton.

We walk about eight miles, in two hours, and I feel as if I’ve run for twenty. There were no cows but a lot of pheasants.

Pants, driven wild by rabbits

On the ridge…