Yesterday afternoon I defrosted some bread from the freezer but it didn’t look very appetising so I mixed wholemeal flour and strong white 50:50 and baked my first Colmworth loaves.  We could even smell the cooked bread out in the field where Jeremy was putting up pea netting and pea sticks.

This afternoon we put on our walking shoes and set off on a four mile walk to Wilden taking the footpath from Mill Heights about a mile along the road. We followed the path until we came across a small wooden bridge over a ditch and then stuck to the side of the fields, careful to avoid walking on the winter barley.  We couldn’t see any further signs but walked along the backs of the Wilden houses and came out across the road from Wilden Lower School just by the pub and the footpath to the church.  Just as we were about to walk across the bridge over the stream a car cut us off and a large, tattooed fella rolled down his window and asked if we were the “people who had been seen walking around the fields just now?”  It was us but, as Jeremy said, “we thought we were on the footpath and stayed by the edge of the field meaning to cause no harm.”  We were told that there are only two footpaths in Wilden and that we were not on either of them and that we were being addressed by the head of neighbourhood watch and that ” four or five folk have rung me” on seeing yours truly! Not much excitement in Wilden then.  We chatted to Gareth for some time and discovered that he had worked for the forestry commission for forty years, was bored in retirement and had lost his curly locks and long beard to chemotherapy.  We learnt that Wilden has not only a pub and a school and an active neighbourhood watch which extends as far as our property, but also 400 or 500 residents. We parted as friends ( I think) and then went to view the church and the graves, which were beautifully tended and as we left a couple were arriving with spring primroses and gardening tools to carry out some additional work.

Our field daffodils that came inside on Friday afternoon have opened.

Remember, nothing goes unnoticed in small places so we must be on our best behaviour!