By: Blonde Two

I had a text from Blonde One on Saturday, to ask if I fancied coming for a ‘wander’ and a coffee on some footpaths around a certain (very lovely) village that will form part of this week’s Bronze DofE practice expedition. The answer was of course yes!

A ‘wander’ is an interesting concept for a Blonde. It is not the same as a Bimble and does not necessarily require the same clothing, equipment or amount of time. I was unsure how much of any of the aforementioned I would need so I took everything to see what Blonde One had brought.

Obviously telepathy had ensured that we had the same clothes on; jeans and summer walking tops. I rarely walk anywhere without my boots so that bit was easy. We had a debate about gaiters (experience tells us that some of the lanes are muddy) and they went into the bags, and then back out again into the car boot fairly quickly. Blonde One had a flask, I didn’t, but that was fine because we have shared coffee before.

Everybody knows that you don’t go walking with jeans on, but as we were wandering and rain was unlikely, it seemed reasonable to suggest that we could get away with them.

This was a mistake! It didn’t rain (getting and staying wet is the main problem with jeans) and it wasn’t cold (there is nothing more chilling than a wet pair of jeans). But we had both forgotten that ‘wandering’ actually means just that to a Blonde. Instead of simply following the lane that needed to be checked out (all good), we explored side paths, listened to bees in trees …Red Hawthorn … took detours, gazed at a quarry, disapproved of buildings, looked for a missing campsite, took photos of flowers …Red Campion … stopped for coffee, counted strange boxes (more tomorrow) and generally messed around.

All of this took a long time on a pretty humid day. By the time we had finished, our legs were complaining about being wrapped in warm, damp denim and our faces were a touch sunburned.

A lesson learnt I think! But we did have fun and England was having a very pretty day.