April 11^th 2023

A diary page? For the first time in a decade?? Here goes

Walk around Four Marks and Chawton. 10.5 km

Runkeeeper is good, but unwieldy. The Diary app is good but it takes ages to write, I guess I could do it on my laptop, but there is also ceding of control. It is discouraging when the police take two laptops and destroy one and keep the other for eighteen months and counting. I heard a great phrase about the probation service yesterday that can apply to any field, but especially the police. They lack ‘professional curiosity’. Another time, another place, the same bastards would have been burning books, witches and niggers. So I’m sat in a car park, as usual nowadays, surrounded by trees and squirrels, watching people drive in and out to take their lovely dogs for a walk (or other people’s lovely dogs for a walk) and thought I really should keep some records sometimes. Why? So if you are ever passing this way you can pull up and go for the same excellent walk. It is an easy navigate. I also wanted to do a map – like this!

The marker is standard red, size two. I am going to mix my measures, not put a scale on the maps, you can see the 1 km squares, and not put a compass on the map unless it is not orientated North Up.

I went clockwise from the car park at the North West.

• Follow the main path just keep going in the same direction for over three km.
• At the cottage and road turn right, under the railway bridge and cross the A31 roundabout (That is the shittiest part of the walk right there), If you want go and visit Jane Austen’s house by following the signs left, otherwise
• hold your line and look out for the wee sign and steps a couple of hundred yards up the A32 to your right, follow them and you are back on the nice track again. Stride out for a mile, I’m sure its difficult to go wrong after the little shimmy near the start. Under an old bridge,
• eventually you will reach a building. Turn Right (I didn’t see a signpost). A couple of hundred yards, sit on the roller at the corner and eat an orange. Soon after the track turns that 90 degrees left you
• get to a metalled road. Turn RIGHT. Once you are on that road just keep going, there were no cars. After some posh houses with tennis courts and a beautiful thatched cottage it turns into a track, Keep going. Into The Woods! After a kilometre,
• where the woods finish, turn right with the track. After six hundred metres
• you are faced with four choices! I went left, but if I was doing it again I’d go straight on. Either way
• when you get to the road turn right. The best bit of your walk is done, all you have to do now is walk along that road to
• turn left at the A 31, walk 400 steps and
• cross the busy A31 and turn right and follow the signs to Medstead. Eight minutes walk later, at the corner, you are back at the car park.
• Have a coffee and complain about traffic and police.

Nearly perfect.

Steve Kidd 07462 27 25 52