The extraordinary Rhyhall walk and the wild discoveries made. 16 May 2024. Part the first

By Sir Hardly Anyone

If you have been paying any attention at all, you may have noticed that detailed articles explaining the background to our Thursday walks have not appeared  on this site for several centuries.    The reason is that my junior assistant camera carrier on was lately arrested by police in Guatemala and charged with illegally taking pictures of the local undergrowth, while I was back at the ranch laid low by the plague.   Or something like that.

However, upon the arrival of a miracle cure from Boots the Chemist (of whom it has been said)  I find myself up and running or at least staggering, and it was therefore with much glee and jollillity able to join in the walk on 16 May 2024, for the first time in several millennia.     The journey as you can see from the picture above was not without incident, but I made it to Rhyhall in good time and was warmly welcomed by the hearty souls of Peterborough Ramblers out for a day’s walk in the glorious sunshine.   Or at least out for a walk.

The resolute band who gathered at the start quickly became if not a swaying throng at least a few more than the three of us (I’m behind the camera so you can’t see me, if you see what I mean) but I was reassured I was in the right place on the right day (although really I knew that because it was utterly chucking it down with the wet stuff.)

We thus greeted each other and waited and indeed yes over time the numbers grew as I knew they would.

And so there I was once more with the merry throng whose company I had so much missed since getting a silly injury while picking up my luggage last Christmas in Sydney airport.

But now all thoughts of sunshine and temperatures of 80 degrees could be swept aside for who needs those when one can walk in the rain under a miserable sky along the unknown roads and pathways of lesser Rutland (of which it has been said).

For indeed who would ever want anything else?

But forsooth I pray do not think of this as a walk in a land of fields alone for there in the distance from time to time we would spy the remnants of civilisation, for the story is told that in days of yore the land of the Ruts was indeed inhabited by folk not too dissimilar from ourselves although I find that hard to believe.

And we were indeed all on the look out for exactly these folk, for although we saw no signs of habitation logic told us that there must be people or at least some elves hiding somewhere.

For truth be told I did once live in the metropolis of Rutland myself and I must say it didn’t look like this at all.  Clearly it has changed, as now it needs a gang of walkers marching across the fields beating a path on behalf of civilisation and ensuring that the great developments in technology of the last two centuries are cast aside in favour of the mighty staff and stick.

Or something like that.

But no, it seems I need have feared not for no sooner were we off the straight and narrow between what I was reliably

informed were the green shoots of  green shooty things and all was made clear (at least to everyone else if not to me) that these were indeed the true signs of an earlier lost generation of Ruts of which it has so often been said, and I for one am most certainly not one to say otherwise, or not, as the case may be.  If you take my drift.

But then and only then did the fearsome truth become apparent for in our meandering, nay our rambling, we discovered we had strayed into the territory of the omnivorous greenery, the most feared and indeed fearsome garden plantation in the history of Rutlandshire.

A plant so voracious it eats the very buildings upon which it grows, before devouring those resident within.  It was indeed a frightening sight, and quickly we moved on, with a velocity rarely previously seen in these parts.

There will be more from our walk in the near future, if the plants don’t get me first.

But I am sure you can imagine that for a walker returning to the fray after several months unable to explore the world beyond this was a pretty fearsome introduction to the wider world even for one who lives in Corby..  And you really won’t believe what happened next.    (There’s an index to this website here)