19/07/14 - Weather to Go?

Distance - 5.5 Miles
Geocaches - 6
Walk Inspiration - Stage 14 of Millennium Way


I am dog tired.  Thursday Night's Thunderstorm took us by surprise and we tried to sleep through the thunder claps and the lightning that illuminated the bedroom.

Friday night, I expressed more interested.  When awakened by the dog crying at 3am (turns out she doesn't like it) I spent an hour tracking the lighting bolts on a web site on my tablet.  Amazing what you can do with technology.

So it came to this weekend's walking.  We looked all around the area and Warwickshire was saying merely cloudy between 10am and 2pm.  Should we risk a leg on the Millennium way?

We went for it - driving through some terrible weather that stopped once we got within 5 miles of Henley-In-Arden.  Once again, I am amazed by weather predicting/viewing technology.

Park up at the Prince Harry car park and down the high street before heading through the Spa to get into the open countryside.  We are doing the walk in reverse, to ensure that we pass the pubs on our re-entry into Henley.

No Jacket Required at this Point

The caches are in the early part of this route.  Part of a longer trail but we are only looking for 6 of them today.  Sonia gets the tricky ones.

Caching makes up for the lack of views and items of interest.  The only thing that seemed to interest Sonia was the size of a Ram's Doo-Dahs, which she made me photograph and share with the world.

Swing Low

Then the weathermen let us down.  The heaven's open.  Thankfully free of a thunderstorm but the prediction of clouds tell only half the story.  These are cloud's dumping their contents on us.

At First, we hide out in a barn

After 10 minutes waiting to see if it will improve, there is nothing for it and we get the goretex jackets out the rucksack.

I a starting to lose my faith in high end waterproof kit.  Once again, we are out for a couple of hours and despite goretex everything - we are soaked through to the skin and empty water out of our boots.  Should have just gone in a cagoule.

The walk is lacking variety - fields out.  A road section.  Fields back.  It kind of looks like this.

Saving you the effort

After the road, we head back to town - picking up this circular walk's leg of the Millennium Way.

Millennium Way - One of four to follow

If anything, the way back is worse.  Not only is the rain heavier but we have the dog unfriendly stiles that prompted us to leave the scaredy cat dog at home. We also have waist wet crops to deal with.

Still - you can only get so damp.

Heading Back through the Crops

To keep spirits up, we talk about what refreshment we will choose when we hit the town.  We had problems the last time we came walking in Henley.  The White Swan has a proud sign saying that "it has been serving Henley for over 650 Years".  Last time we came, we were told they were not doing food at lunch time as they were expecting a big party in.

16 Months later we enter, sit down and look at the menu.  The barman rushes over.  He more or less asks me what I am doing in his fine pub.  When I say, "I might have lunch" he replies in a surly manner - "well you better hurry up, as we have a big party coming in".

Serving Henley for 650 years.  But not in a particularly pleasant way.