LONG EATON 8 MILE CIRCULAR WALK

 

I started out 6th on the waitlist with 30 people on the walk. Mothers day combined with slight rain reduced the list drastically to 14 on the morning to only 5 people turning out for the walk. I went for the simple reason I'd never been Long Eaton before and it was convenient for the buses on Sunday.

We headed along the canal north and turned west onto a footpath that went towards the M1 bridge. The walk was good so far if a little muddy but then a few problems began to occur.

1) The 3 others were too slow for the group leader and I got the not so subtle hint he was getting annoyed by this. Under normal circumstances with a bigger group slow walkers get the memo but not this time.

2) I mentioned in conversation that I started walking with this group at the end of covid lockdown. The conversation drifted towards anti vaccination and other conspiracy theories. I have a very low opinion of these people but couldn't be bothered to argue so ended up walking ahead alone for around an hour.

3) We hit the halfway point at the bulls head pub in Breaston for a rest. I checked my meetup notifications to read comments other people had put on the walk. Unfortunately they had gone, for some strange reason the walk was now down as cancelled halfway through on the website despite the face that we were still on it. We could only speculated that someone has written something that was negative,

4) The route south was absolutely horrendous. I'd covered some of these fields on my own previous walk and partly rerouted due to ankle deep mud. Not this time, it took nearly an hour trying to cross these fields. The only good thing was I didn't slip over completely.

All the time I was looking at the map on my phone to see perfectly good roads we could have walked on just a few hundred meters away.

By the time we got to west park which was another mud bath that could have easily been rerouted I'd more than had enough. Spent 90 minutes cold and wet on the bus home.