I was a little ill a while ago and one of the things I like to do when I'm recovering is to go for a bit of a walk to help stretch my body out after being stuck indoors for a few days and to get some fresh air into my sinuses and lungs. I had previously thought about taking a walk in the mountain, but then the sensible part of my brain realised that probably be a bit too much to start with and I decided to go on a local walk instead.
I did think that a local walk would be easy enough to plan and do, especially after having a good look at my OS map (and a quick check on the app to make sure it was up to date). However, it didn't exactly go to plan. In fact, it didn't go to plan at all. Firstly, the path I had originally planned to take was closed, which I had kind of expected as there has been a lot of infrastructure done to the area due to the large road works taking place and they have been doing some work on changing the way the water drains off the hills onto the road (or not onto the road). But then the second route I tried to take was also blocked by a lot of fencing and, I'm guessing, the same work that had shut off the first. However, the weird thing about this path block is that there was a new footpath sign there pointing in the direction you can no longer, not just on one place but two. This is a little bit confusing.
After skirting around the fencing I got onto a bike way, which I followed in the same direction I had originally planned on going in the hope it would get me to the path I had mapped out earlier. There was a stile at this part so I thought that this path at least was still accessible. However, this also turned out to not be the case. The route was relatively easy to find, but there were a number of places were there had obviously been stiles at one point, but they weren't there anymore. I did double check to make sure I was one one of the public footpaths as I never like walking on someone's private land when there is no established path there, but it all matched up and I also wasn't the only person walking that route that day as there was also a couple also trying following a map. We got through the section but did, unfortunately, end up right outside someone's house. This is never where you want to end up, but we were able to get back onto the road and out of their way pretty quickly.
I had planned on having a relatively long walk that day, but after the complications of the morning I decided to just call it for that day and try again at some other time. When I got home I did double check the route again and do some searches to see if there was any information on the changes being made to the area, but couldn't find any. It was a little bit frustrating, not due to the possible changes in route and access, but because the information about these possible changes were not readily available. I'm not sure if it's worth contacting the local authority to find out what is happening as I don't want to make the same mistake again in the future and I'm obviously not the only one making this mistake. Hopefully the next time I attempt to go for a local walk I'll have a bit of a better outcome.
