I went for a ramble today, heading out from my own front door to roam back and forth across the boundaries between my town, Aldershot, and our upmarket neighbour, Farnham. The two towns are in different counties, with the River Blackwater forming the border for much of its length. There are many routes between them, mostly by road, but my favourite is the path along the riverbank from the eastern edge of Aldershot southwest towards the eastern outskirts of Farnham. It’s a pleasant little path, about half an hour’s walk out of town, which avoids roads, and links to many tracks and trails–turn north instead and it crosses the towpath of the Basingstoke Canal before continuing onwards towards the Hampshire-Berkshire border. South, and it connects to the North Downs Way heading east towards Dover, or the web of tracks and trails that rise into the North Downs on the Surrey-Sussex border (seriously, I live and work in liminal spaces).

Today I turned a different way, leaving the river to wind through lanes and backroads until I crossed the northern edge of Farnham through the lower end of Farnham park. I stopped for lunch in the town centre, and then climbed back up to the top of the park–once the deer park of the Bishops of Winchester, who had a country retreat here–and out into the fields and woods west of the town to circle back towards the far end of Farnham. It was one of those walks where I adapted my plans as I went, and I was rewarded in the last few miles with a stunning path I’d never walked before. Pictures below (sorry, no captions, because I’m a) knackered and b) 16k down on Nanowrimo).