Walk for Polio Plus: Tue 29th Dec 2009 - Leg 3 : Willian to Codicote 11.8 miles

This was the section of the walk for mud-larks. The day dawned wet with a bitter north easterly wind. It did not improve! However, full of Christmas cheer, Peter and Barbara Mitton, Guy Garfit, his daughter Helena, her boy friend Richard and the dog Ginny, Sandra Scott, John Kelly, Jim Webb, Neil Guttridge, Chris Hardy and me (David Izod) set off.

We got lost near to Cardinal Wolsey’s palace, who famously fell out with Henry VIII, had a dice with death crossing the A602 dual carriageway and pressed on regardless. Why the reference to mud-larks? Well, the farmers plant up their winter crops with scant regard to a public footpath expecting you to walk over the field in the right direction. Because it is newly ploughed each of picked up a hundred weight of mud on each boot by the time we crossed it!

We passed the church of St Paul’s Walden and later the ornate house of St Paul’s Walden Bury, where the late Queen Mother was christened and reputedly born, respectively. A little further on having ploughed our way through another obligatory mud bath where the River Mimram had overflowed its banks, we arrived at the village of Whitwell. We lunched at the Red Lion. We could not be served food in the pub because we had a dog with us but we were allowed to eat our own food sat outside in the pouring rain under the smokers canopy.

Suitably refreshed, we made our way onwards through fields and old parkland, crossed a classical bridge over a dried up ornamental lake then followed the Mimram through to Codicote, arriving just at sunset.

We certainly earned our sponsorship money this day but we had a lot of laughs along the way, observed huge piles of empty bottles outside houses indicating that they had had a good Christmas, and had the satisfaction of the achievement of another leg.

David Izod