Today was a playful day. It started when the cloud lifted above the trees and I could see the pole on Ragleth Hill from the living room window. Up by Rectory Woods and past the Longmynd Hotel. I spent some time exploring the waymarked paths in Allen Coppice which the owners of the hotel kindly let the general public use. I tried to walk all the paths without retracing my steps too often. This coincided with a rainy interlude and was a sheltered place to spend time.

It was drying up as I pressed on up the Hundred Steps and across to Carding Mill Valley for a black coffee. Still fine, so I took the higher path along to the Reservoir, and came back along the other side of the stream taking a sharp right to climb the steep hillside, thinking that I was bound to hit the Burway road eventually. I did, sooner than expected, so instead of turning back I found a track parallel to it that took me higher.

I felt it was not the day to go to the very top, so when I came to the head of a valley on my left, I crossed it and climbed diagonally across the hillside opposite. I soon realised that I was not as far east as I had supposed, and heading east from the next hill just took me to a slope far too steep to descend safely, so I retraced my steps and descended in a northerly direction which brought me back to the boundary of Rectory Wood.

The weather was still decent and I was not ready to call it a day, so I followed the path up the valley by Townbrook until I reached the highest point I had reached on the Burway, then walked all the way down the road.