Jim and Claire do Wendover--blog #2

Walking in the English countryside is VERY different than walking in the US...or, at least, veyr different than in Texas. First of all, the trails are incredibly maintained and mapped. Throughout the countryside, there are public walks and bridleways and something that threw us off at first was that there are wooden step type things called stiles, which are specifically created and available so that walkers can just hop over fences and walk from field to field. We are so used to posted land and no trespassing signs and the fear of getting shot that we really felt funny just hopping over fences. At one point during the walk, we encountered a pasture full of rams, which our book told us to enter (neglecting to mention the rams) and we debated for about 10 minutes whether we should cut through the ram pasture (partially because we were kind of scared that the rams might, "ram" us.) By the end of our walk, we were perfectly comfortable with cutting through pastures of farm animals and scaling fences.

Here is a picture of me, climbing over my first stile. It was raining just a little bit at that point. We were in good spirits. Jim was even moved to do his best Sound of Music Impersonation: