high up on the way downs

this week herself and i had a wonderful day out. herself is signed off work with stress, as i may have mentioned. because she is at home she can meet up with people and go for walks. so she and her friend the writer decided to go for a walk. we met the writer at the station and then drove to a place where we could leave the car.

the first bit of the walk i had to be on the lead because of the skylarks. these are some rather daft birds. in spite of the fact that they can fly and so could quite easily find a tree to nest in, they choose to nest on the ground. to make matters worse they nest in fields that are going to be mangled by combine harvesters. in the face of such carnage it is not clear why a humble lurcher could do them any harm but there are signs everywhere telling people to keep their dog on the lead. as though i would get out of bed for anything less than a rabbit!

things looked up a bit later. we sat down for a rest. herself and the writer had a cup of coffee. i was allowed some prickly water. it has little bubbles in that burn my nose but its better than nothing. no sooner had herself poured out the coffee than some huge vehicles arrived and nearly ran over us. they were harvesting the skylarks, and it has to be said they were making quite a racket about it. one of them stopped almost on top of us while the driver ate his lunch without turning off the engine. ah, the peace and quiet of the countryside!

we got on our way again and after interminable photo stops (at last herself has someone to walk with who doesn't complain at the endless stopping to take a picture) we got to the bench where we were going to have lunch. alas! some people had found it before us! how dare they! so we had to walk further on to the jumping gate. this is where, when i was a bit more sprightly, i used to practice my jumping. i get my jumping skills from my grandad who it would appear could not be kept in anywhere. when the peeps first had me they could not work out how i could get out of the dog jail and into the house. they soon realised i could not be kept away from my bed and was leaping over the 5 foot fence and in through the window. i fear they had not bargained for a flying lurcher.

anyway, after a picnic lunch we wended our way back to the house. by now herself was melting into a pool of lard so had to have a shower before the peeps drove the writer back to her train.

i think the next outing may be to a beach - i only hope there will not be 200 greyhounds there...