My mum loves to remind me of the time around 10 years ago when I wailed furiously whilst out walking their dog in the muddy countryside that I was a city girl and always would be and the countryside was no place for me. I was 24 (or so), living in a studio flat in London’s Zone 1 – of course I hated the countryside and getting stuck in the mud in my non-wellied feet really didn’t help.
Fast forward 10 years and life has changed a little – Zone 1 has been swapped for Zone 4 and the studio flat for a house. Now that we have a dog of our own I’m finding the lure of the countryside more appealing. Thankfully we don’t have to go too far to get away from city life as we live just a 5 minute walk from the beautiful Elmstead Woods which is perfect scamping ground for Maddie.
Setting off one frosty Saturday morning a few weeks ago, I thought it was high time to take some pictures of one of our favourite dog walks. There are a couple of trails you can follow which form part of London’s Green Chain walk and thankfully mean it’s quite hard to get lost. It definitely gives us the feeling of a little bit of countryside escapism from our city home.
All in all the walk takes no more than 30 minutes or so in a loop around the woods (lots of criss-crossing to make sure Maddie gets enough exercise!) but we were delighted what we found when we deviated off the main path…
We feel so grateful to have the beautiful Elmstead Woods almost right on our doorstep and especially to discover all these little extra touches. I have a feeling we’ll be spending a lot of time up here over the years to come.
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