Project 52: Week 32 - The Shore Walk

I'm continuing my break from the prompts on the BBC website with another group of photos taken on one of the walks on the estate where we live. This time this was a walk that neither myself, nor Mr Click, have done since before we adopted Tara mainly because we weren't sure if dogs were allowed that way and didn't want to get into trouble. Since then we've realised that it is a dog-friendly route so we decided to do out our version of it.

The official route takes you round in a big circle starting and finishing at the Visitor Centre, but we adapted it to suit ourselves by cutting out a big chunk of it. Before we left we had to decide which of the two hills we'd end up tackling would be the easiest to walk up afterwards (we live at the top of a hill with a steep slope on one side and a gentler one on the other); we decided to go down the steeper slope and back up the longer but gentler one and that decided we set off on our trek.

They've been replacing lots of the signs on the estate recently but I personally prefer these old ones. There's something just lovely about the font. I realise it's probably a little bit silly to get hung up over the font on a sign but these ones just look more old-fashioned than the ones they're replacing them with. I'm sure they'll be updated with time, but I had fun spotting the old and new ones while we were walking.

 

Tara loved the walk. It was funny because we started the route as though we were gShe spent the whole time sniffing and rushing from one side of the path to another. We both enjoyed it as well. I'd forgotten just exactly which landmarks this one would take us past so it was good fun spotting things again. Like this big carved wooden snake at the picnic area:

The walk also took us past a big boathouse building. It's not in use any more and I'm not brave enough to go all the way in, but it fascinates me. I'd love to be one of those people who goes exploring abandoned buildings but I think this is the closest I'm going to get to it.

 

It's been so long since we last walked this way but it hasn't changed at all. Not even after all the bad weather we had last year so it was obviously built to last. Tara was really confused about where I was going as I trundled down the steps to snap some photos through the door and window. There's steps up onto the top of it as well but I'm a bit nervous of going up there so stayed well back.

The last bit of the walk was largely uphill. I'd remembered the gentle slope of the road but forgotten the long slope up on the grass from the shore to the path. We were wearing jackets because it'd been a bit chilly when we left the house but was very warm by the time we were heading home. There were also loads of big buzzy flies around which thankfully left us behind once we got onto the road.

I would've liked to have taken more photos but it was quite a tiring walk (we were gone for about an hour) and Tara was all over the place so it was awkward to keep stopping. It's definitely one we'll try again at some point though and hopefully Tara will be a bit calmer next time once she realises it's somewhere familiar.