Walking Again

 Yesterday I was walking in the Oxfordshire countryside with my brother and walking friends. It was a gloriously sunny morning – the first in a long dreary while – and, for a wonder, it stayed that way for most of the day, only clouding over briefly in the early afternoon. Our walk began in the attractive little stone-built town of Eynsham and took in the villages of Church Hanborough and Freeland – all three of which had their churches open. St Leonard, Eynsham, has 'remarkably elegant' (Pevsner) nave arcades with concave mouldings – which find an echo, oddly, in the nave of St Peter and St Paul, Church Hanborough, a building blessed with some very fine 15th-century woodwork: screens, rood loft and pulpit. Freeland, by contrast, offers a small but sumptuously decorated high Victorian church by J.L. Pearson, with his trademark apse, and an attractive adjoining parsonage.
  So, a good day architecturally, but the walk was really the point – our first outing in five months, a sunny day, fine open countryside, and good company. I was delighted to see redwings in good numbers (having hitherto seen only a few this year), and parties of long-tailed tits, and skylarks testing their song, sensing spring in the air. The going was sometimes tough – mud and lying water, especially in the patches of woodland we had to traverse, or rather bash our way through, bent double, trying to keep our feet on something like dry land and not to fall over. But it was good. And the best of it all was that my brother, who has been recovering from radiotherapy and hadn't walked more than a mile or two in a long while, had no difficulty walking the full six miles of this memorable walk.