I appear to have gone for a walk by mistake

Woodpigeons, Hadfield 

It had been a wild, wet and windy night. Having had two hours' sleep the night before I felt mortally tired and, unsurprisingly, overslept and missed the trains for the planned day out. Earlier the dawn chorus, or what I heard of it, consisted of the usual two duelling blackbirds and a couple of woodpigeons. At least one lesser black-back flew overhead heading for Salford Quays.

It was a cold and miserable day and a large part of me was for spending it in bed with a pot of tea and a stack of Tiger Tim annuals. I decided I needed to get some value out of the last day of my monthly travel card so I headed out to Hadfield for a brief dawdle round the beginning of the Longendale Trail in the half hour between trains, just so I could say I'd had a little exercise.

I travelled light, leaving the camera and bins at home. It was unlikely I'd be missing anything, I wasn't having much of a walk and the light was awful. It was one of those days where the trackside woodpigeons sit on the branches near the bottom of the trees out of the wind. It's already getting difficult to see the birds for the leaves and it's only half past April.

Jackdaws and woodpigeons flitted about the chimney tops of Hadfield. Blackbirds, great tits and a chiffchaff sang in the trees. I walked round from the station and started along the trail. It was blowing a hooley so I thought the most sensible option was to walk the length of the cutting and turn back before the open country above Bottoms Reservoir. That would probably get me back to the station with five minutes or so to spare.

Starting along the trail

Woodpigeons loafed in the trees along the trail. A couple of chiffchaffs sang, a couple spotted me and squeaked alarm calls. Great tits, blue tits and coal tits essayed little snatches of song, one of the blackbirds made a fuller effort though its heart didn't sound in it. The weather was putting us all off. 

The robins were seen but not heard. On the way back I stopped and watched a courting pair, less than a yard away from me by the path. They stopped, had a look at me, decided I was nothing important and got back to the job in hand, she looking winsome and making tiny begging flutters of the wings and he hunting for food then flying over and feeding her. I was glad I didn't have my camera, I'd have scared them off trying to get a photo.

I'd dawdled too long watching the robins and just missed the train so rather than hang around Hadfield Station for half an hour I decided to walk to Dinting for the next train. Then I wondered where a path went and ended up walking down into Dinting Vale and Glossop Brook. The way you do.

I was five minutes from Dinting Station when I saw a path leading off the road into some scrub. I had half a memory of a path round here that led to the station by a slightly roundabout route, the train was due in ten minutes, I decided to take the path. It wasn't the one I was thinking about, or else I missed a turn off somewhere along the way. A hundred yards from the station it emerged from the scrubby woodland with its singing great tits, goldfinches and chiffchaffs and lurched down the hill, eventually meeting Glossop Brook at the foot of the viaduct. Halfway down the hill I thought I heard a whitethroat but whatever it was shut up sharpish so I couldn't be sure of it.

Dinting Viaduct 

I got the bus back to Glossop Station, I didn't trust myself not to be still there at midnight wanting to find where paths were going.