Somehow my last post in this series was the October update in which I bragged about it being ‘almost on schedule’ - well, that didn’t bode so well did it? I’ve also realised that there was little joy for me writing these posts so long after the walks, and so having given in some thought over Christmas and the New Year I thought I’d change that. For my 2025 posts my intention is to post them much earlier in the month on the first (or at times second) Wednesday of each month.

But before I can do that I need to catch up with my 2024 posts, and so that’s what I’ll do now.

In mid-November we woke to snow, not a huge amount thankfully, but enough for me to double down on my hibernation tendencies. MOH though has very few of these, and so he ventured out sharing with me a photo or two of his expedition, which he was probably also daft enough to do on his bike, or at least consider in any case.

Either way his pictures did nothing to persuade me outside, and confirmed I should stay snug and warm indoors. A week later though it was a different story and I was pleased to get out for an approaching sunset walk, also along Moor Lane.

It always strikes me as odd when we have snow before all of the autumn leaves have dropped - but then again our weather seems more crazily mixed up as the days go on so I really shouldn’t be that surprised. But what a different a week makes, hey?

And even though it was way colder than it looked, the glorious light more than made up for that.

We reached our usual ‘turn back’ point of the bridge and I don’t think I’ve ever seen it look quite so picturesque - though I’m sure it has, I’ve just not been there to see or capture it. I also noticed ahead of us on Moor Lane the sheep in the right hand field - while this might not strike you as odd, as obviously that’s where sheep should be, it’s the first time we’d spotted them here.

Heading back and it almost looked as if the hedgerows were aflame with the sun - the picture here only does part of the justice, in real life they were flaming beautiful.

We get some brilliant sunsets here, and often my pictures are from our upstairs windows - but not this time, this one was an out in the open natural beauty capture.

In December I only ventured out on foot once, and that was on Christmas Day. We’d booked lunch at the pub in Elston and our plan was always to walk there and back, whatever the weather. We were lucky as when the day arrived, it was another one with blue skies and also unseasonably warm - much better than our worst case scenario of driving rain.

These pictures are from that walk, heading out around 1pm and heading back much, much fuller a good few hours later!

Given that it was peak lunchtime on Christmas Day you wouldn’t expect much traffic, but it was a joy to see the A46 this empty.

We turned onto the path towards Elston, and so the A46 was on our left, but you’d never know it (and especially that day) given our view. I think this photo is one of my favourites so far.

Even though we were heading off for our Christmas lunch I still had a couple of photo stops along the way. I mean, catkins and lichen - I was never going to walk straight past now was I?

And then much later, and much fuller, we headed back along the path complete with bright torch and accompanied part of the way by the Christmas lights which were magical - and the first time we’d seen these as they are definitely off the usual routes through the village.

Thanks for joining me for this update, if you enjoyed this post you may also like to see all of the posts in this series or some previous series where I revisit the same place - there’s my year in Greenwich Park and remember that time when I followed a tree?

If all goes to plan, then January’s update will be here sooner than you know it!