Sheep

There's never much competition for the various sections of the Sunday paper that flop onto our doormat with a thud. Everyone seems to have their own favourites. There's too much there to read thoroughly in any case without setting aside the entire week. My usual strategy is to skim the stories in every section in an hour at most and mark ones I plan to return to later in the week. Inevitably recycling claims many of those that remain undevoured by Thursday night.

I wonder if high street shops are warned of which gadgets will appear on the pages of supplements such as In Gear and Travel, both Sunday Times offerings, ready for the rush on Sunday afternoon. Today's featured gadgets include a SatNav for walkers_[1]. Now don't get me wrong, SatNavs are great and next time I feel a sudden urge to go on a walk without having made any advance preparations I'll definitely consider downloading one of these OS walkers' maps to my GPS enabled phone. The snag is, for me at least, that it would create more problems than it solves at the present time. For one thing I'm not in the habit of keeping my walking boots in the car. They're still languishing in the garage covered in mud from the last walk. This brings me to the next problem. Will the walks you can download to your phone have any more information about which corners of a field closest to the style nearest to the pub on the way home have not been transformed by a herd of Friesians to a 2 foot deep quagmire, than the out of date walks guide on my bookshelf? No? I thought not. We dropped our map in said quagmire. It survived that, a little muddy perhaps, but the hosepipe outside the pub claimed it later! The SatNav probably wouldn't have survived even the mud.

I'm left thinking that for now at least I'll stick to good old fashioned maps. There's something rather good about being able to see the entire walk the whole time if you fold the sheet carefully enough. Then there's the later argument about which way you actually went as opposed to where you intended to go. Was that photo of you taken at the top of the peak or was it really only the hillock beside you walked up by mistake? It would really spoil the fun over lunch too if you couldn't recall the tale of how you had to climb the barbed wire fence to get back to the path without a 2 mile detour.

Anyhow, happy walking this weekend everyone, and if you see a sheep burping, do take a picture. Lamb may be off the menu soon_[2] if too many farmers have a sudden urge to save the environment.

[1] Matt Rud, (24 May 09) SatNavs for Walkers , Sunday Times Travel Section Page 4 [online] http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/travel/walks/article6342351.ece
[2] Jonathan Leake (24 May 09) Burping of the Lambs Blows Roast off the Menu, Sunday Times Main Section Page 11 [online] http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/environment/article6350237.ece