Horse Coats, Daffodils, Witches And Calderstones

I love visiting England, so long as no one forces me to drive anywhere.

Even in January, so green and picturesque, the countryside occasionally gives one the feeling they’ve stepped into an illustrated children’s fairytale book. With it’s fenced thatched cottages replete with white ducks waddling through the front yard, sheep grazing on the hillsides, horses in the pasture, swans on the mere, winding forest paths over stiles and across footbridges, ancient stone circles and rumors of witches, she definitely gives you the impression you are not in Kansas anymore. We didn’t stray too far from Cheshire and Lancashire this time around, but there are still many lovely places here for a walk about.

There’s nothing like taking a week and a half off from work to make a person feel incredibly lazy. I think it’s safe to say I would have absolutely no problem spending the rest of my life sipping coffee in bed till noon while contemplating where I wanted to go walking later on in the day.Where shall we go today? Mersey Forest? Anderton Boat Lift? What? Three and a half miles? Oh…um…OK. Yes, it is a bit overcast today. It will be sunny tomorrow, I promise, and we’ll go to Redesmere and Capesthorne Hall. Surely, after that crazy dream I had, we’ll have to go up to Pendle to search out the famous witches. Calderstones in Liverpool? Strawberry Fields? Frodsham Edge? Care to take a walk with me?

Occasionally, I like to attach a video to the end of my blog post. Like a film, it seems requisite that each post should have a fitting soundtrack. It occurred to me to put said song at the beginning rather than the end. This way you can have a listen as you peruse said post. Makes sense, right? Or just watch the Fab Four video and then read the post.

Mersey Forest

A barn owl marks the way.

A little soggy in places.

The sun makes a brief appearance.

I love pub signs!

Built in 1875, the Anderton Boat Lift was the world’s first and is currently England’s only boat lift. It provides a link between the Trent and Mersey Canal and the Weaver Navigation, some 50 feet below.

Young Swan

Canal Boats

Fishing

Footbridge

It’s getting dark. Until tomorrow.

Redsmere And Capesthorne

Birds on the mere.

Friendly folks feeding the swans.

Around The Lake

Redesmere Sailing Club

Muddy Bank

A Captured Sprite

Country Stile

Capesthorne

Nice Driveway!

The front lawn. I love the hawk sculpture lakeside.

While walking through this field, we first came upon a small pile of rabbit fur and soon discovered this enormous Goshawk perched atop of this tree. Unfortunately, that’s as good a picture as I could get with my small camera before I scared him off. (The photo is quite a bit larger if you click on it!)

The sun is going down.

We’ll say goodnight to the horses wearing coats.

This night I had one of those epic dreams…you know the kind that are extremely vivid and seem to go on most of the night. You wish you could record it and turn it into a full length feature film… I dreamed of witches practicing black magic inside of a church…highly beautiful and extremely seductive witches! We decided to take our next walk in Pendle, home of the famous Pendle Witches.

Barley in Pendle

The Witch’s Way, Eastern Loop

Witch Way? Tee hee.

Walk along the river.

Foot bridge to The Pendle Inn

The Pendle Inn

A spooky pub sign…looking a lot like the end of that dream I had. Lol

Moss covered sandstone wall. Lovely.

Bee Keeper

Hillside View

Country Lane

Overlooking the Hamlet of Roughlee, we cross through a farm…..

…and over a footbridge..

The Lovely Hamlet of Roughlee

…then into Roughlee where we are greeted by a witch. Could it be Alice Nutter?

The sun is going down over the falls and my camera will soon refuse to take a decent picture!

A gate

A chimney,

Enough light for one more snapshot as we make our way back to the Barley car park. Again, we’ll say goodnight to another horse wearing a coat.

Liverpool and the Calderstones

The main reason for coming to the park…the stones… sadly housed in this greenhouse structure in serious disrepair.

“With expansive views across the Mersey Estuary and beyond, this fine walk wanders the wooded sandstone escarpment above Frodsham and visits the site of an Iron Age hillfort.”

I love Frodsham Hill. It seems I inevitably end up here each visit, the day before its time for me to fly home. It’s becoming familiar and friendly. We had a very nice walk this day and one of the locals gave us a little more history of the place. Soldiers who had been hospitalized in the area during the first World War have very meticulously carved their names into some of the sandstone cliffs on the hill during their convalescence. Without a doubt, beautiful graffiti of which I took no pictures of on this trip. The last bit of our walk, we got caught in the rain which seems to be the status quot on Frodsham as well. And as this blog post is becoming excessively longer than I’d anticipated, I’ll just share a few more photos with you and wrap things up. It’s all exceedingly ‘lovely’ (and green!), ya know?

Back home to be greeted by a backed up frozen septic in a dull brown January landscape that is Minnesota , and reminded of the grim reality of having to actually work for a living, I find myself left with a single burning question. Why do the horses in Lancashire wear coats and they don’t wear them here?

AS these insane things happen all the time, my son’s friend brought this film over shortly after I posted this.