Tatton Park

Wednesday 17 January 6 Miles

Hilary, Tracey and Jane

We parked in the layby on the Mobberley Road, B5085.

We were pretty much on the flight path into Manchester here, and a plane soon passed over, looking up we glimpsed sight of it through the cloud.

We had a walk through the Orchard Community Garden, there was toast on strings hanging from the leafless trees. Then we went back onto the road and round the corner to find the path that crossed the railway. There was a van with couple of workers on the bridge so we cautiously passed them on the flattened snow surface. We then met quite a number of dogs not on a lead with two ladies, fortunately they paid no attention to us.

Hilary had told us we would be joining the dog walking people from here, and we certainly met lots of dog walkers. As we walked through the woods we did meet a few dog walkers.

The day was very misty and even though we were walking alongside the lake we could hardly see it. As the sun started to break throuh the mist we did get glimpses of it. The cold weather meant that the ground was firm in some places but in others the water was across the path so we had to walk through some muddy bits!

As we came to the top of Tatton Mere the sun started to break through, we could see the birds standing on the ice in the water. We continued to walk through the snowy grass, where the ground was softer it was quite hard to walk easily. We walked a the road in places but you had to careful as it was icy, we resorted to walking on the edge of the road where there was grass and we felt that was a bit safer.

We passed the front of the house and onto the cobbles around to the courtyard. Hilary had suggested that we had soup in the cafe so that's what we did. Two leek and potatoes soups and one pumpkin soup. Very nice it was too. After that we went to have a look in the shop, there were some nice stuff, we saw a small piece of fruit cake to have with cheese costing £7.75 - we thought that was a bit much.

We started to retrace our steps, passing the front of the hall again. The day had really cleared up now and we could see all around, we could see the building for the runway quite clearly. We headed across the grass towards Tatton Old Hall, Hilary thought we migh be able to get around it and back on the path we came on, but we couldn't. But we did see some deer. Hilary had been disappointed that we hadn't seen any, so when we saw that there was a whole group of deer in the distance and three deer closer to us eating what looked like carrots, she was very pleased.

We got back on the path we needed to be on, alongside the lake, and into the woods where we met the dog walkers again, one dog came running up and jumped up at Tracey but she was happy to stroke it and it then went back to the owner who did aplogise for it jumping up.

We went back to the car and home again.