And when the sun came out...

We went on a walk in the country! New country walk enthusiast, Aurelie, joined us and we were off to the South of London, where there were no floods and the trains were not having issues. We walked from Petersfield to Liss and were definitely feeling the fact that we haven't been on a walk in a long time.

Immediately we hit some colossal puddles, as evidenced by this "walk like an Egyptian" style move I had to bust to get through this kissing gate without water up to my knees:

Early in the walk, we passed a waterfall...foreshadowing of the turbulance to come...
Here are Jim and Aurelie at the waterfall:

At this point, we entered a nature preserve with a lookout hut!

And suddenly, THE HILL was on us. Little did we know that we were about to walk about 500 meters straight up hill. As you can see from my expression in this picture, I didn't think it was that big of a deal:
"Hill Schmill! I've walked up lots of hills before! Allez! Allez!"

"I'm really trying to look like this is fun, but I think I'm dying and no, I really don't care about the view."

Bringing up the rear:

3/4 of the way up we came to a bench, where we contemplated taking a nap or quitting (I don't remember JIm complaining at all. He was having too much fun taking pictures of the rest of us suffering.)

At the bench there was also a plaque commemorating a poet. Aurelie was very excited because the poet was from where she lives in London and was killed where she lived in France (not sure that was a good omen...)

After the hill there were some horses, which made AUrelie a little nervous (see horse chasing us through field on the last walk blog), but these horses were pretty scared of us, too, so took off up a hill as soon as we walked into their pasture. And after the horses were some really beautiful fields of flowers. Before taking pictures of us in the flowers, Jim took some pensive pictures of himself. Here is Jim, at peace in the country:

And the girls in the flowers:

And a fancy car on a fancy farm:

And another fancy car, burned out in the woods:

And, of course, in the middle of the woods, a cat appeared (because
there are always cats appearing when we are out and about. There are a lot of friendly cats in England!)

At the pub, where we again contemplated taking a nap, a nice man took our picture under the pub sign:

And then, while pointing out this fabulous view of a church in the distance:

Jim slid and slowly, slowly fell into the mud on his back and then rolled around like an upside down turtle while I tried to compose myself (scolded by Aurelie who said, "you are not nice.") enough to help him up.

The mud was really abundant, so we slipped and slid our way through a lot of the walk. Jim was wishing for my fall, but I disappointed him by staying upright for the entire walk. Aurelie also demonstrated the superior balance of the female sex.

Jim on a log:

A stream:

Aurlie looking apprehensive about walking through a field of cows. She bravely made it through!

Jim couldn't resist the call of the aerobie and, of course, the aerobie couldn't resist the call of the tree (see Charlie Brown and the blog about the Tour de France. This aerobie spends most of its life in trees). Much time and energy was spent getting the aerobie out of the tree:


...and ten minutes after we got the aerobie out of the tree, Jim threw it into another tree. He borrowed a passing lady's walking stick (Aurelie's idea) to get it out and I forbade the use of the aerobie for the rest of the walk:

Just before the aerobie got stuck in the second tree, we passed these funny creatures, which we decided were sheep crossed with llamas crossed with white bunnies:

Aurelie finally ran out of energy and we had to push her to the train station in a wheel-barrow:

After an 11 mile walk, battling the trees for the aerobie and having to wheel Aurelie, JIm was was so pooped that he went into a trance. Aurelie was revived by a delicious chocolate treat: the Curly Wurly (so good). And I fell asleep on the train.