After all the rain last night, which was truly torrential, I was somewhat surprised to wake up to bright sunshine and a topaz sky this morning.  A treat for mid November. Planning to walk through the fields behind Churton towards Farndon, before turning right down Townfield Lane to the Dee, I decided that it was a moment for seriously waterproof footwear.  Not walking boots but welly boots.  It was a good instinct.  The fields were sodden and marshy, the tracks muddy and mired due to tractors, and the picturesque but unadopted Townfield Lane was a series of lane-wide pools.  The short section of footpath leading north from the lane along the river bank to the field next to the river was only just clear of the flood waters, which were moving fast and forming fascinating eddies.

I always like the Churton-to-Farndon fields following harvest, because of the linear stubble that draws the eye into the distance and focuses attention on individual trees that, at this time of year, are full of bright warm colours.  The deep chestnut brown of the fields provides a beautiful foil for the silvery stubble, the blue skies and the autumnal leaves.  The mirror-like reflections in the standing water were a pleasure in their own right.  Today really was a water walk.

The biggest surprise was spotting a cormorant (or is it a shag?) at the very top of a tall tree by the side of the river (see photo at end of post).  Cormorants and shags are right at home on the coastal estuaries of mid-Wales, and are frequent visitors to the Thames and its former docks in London, both places where I used to live, but I never did learn to tell the difference between them, and I have never seen one this far inland.  It seemed right at home.
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View from the Dee at the end of Townfield Lane across the fields to the Barnston Memorial.

It would have been good to turn this into a circular walk by continuing north along the side of the Dee and taking the footpath from the Dee straight through the plantation onto the track extending directly from Hob Lane in Churton, but the footpath back to Hob Lane through the plantation of trees is usually bad news in even averagely showery weather, with seriously thick, sometimes impassable mud, so I simply retraced my steps on this occasion.  The circular walk is very much a summer activity after a period of very dry weather.

If you don’t like squelching through wet mud and soggy grass, or paddling through big areas of standing water, this is not a good walk following heavy rainfall, even on a beautiful day.  On the other hand, it cast a very familiar local walk in an entirely new light.  After heavy rainfall I would advise that this is not a walk for those with unwilling legs, although my father (he of a notably unwilling leg) had no problems with it in dry periods in the spring and summer.  Today it was far too slippery and sludgy.