Spruce on holiday, Stevenage June 2024
Jane is away working for a few days at Bramham Equestrian show in Leeds. So Spruce has come to stay for a few days, he arrived early afternoon on Wednesday, the 5th of June.
Thursday 6th June
We went out around 10 am, before it gets too warm for a big hairy dog to go out for a walk. Spruce and I went out for about one hour, we headed out to Great Ashby Park, and then turned into ClayPitt Springs woods. About 2/3 of the way through the woods we emerged onto the farmland and walked round a couple of the fields taking photos of wildflowers and insects and Spruce, before looping back around and returning home.
Spruce was on his long rope, he was very well-behaved, and walked to heal when requested. We saw two other dogs at distance but in each occasion we took a different route. The squirrels were out to force, I think we saw 12, three of which frolicked on the path in front of us before bolting up the nearest tree.
I took my Fujifilm X 100 VI camera with me, very lightweight to carry. I stopped to take pictures, and Spruce justified his description as a “Camera dog”, as soon as he sees my camera, he stops and just sniffs around the area where I’m standing and waits for me to finish before we proceed.
Friday 7th June
Spruce and the Foxglove woods
We decided to walk in the other direction today. The plan was to walk through Thirlmere woods across the open space and then into Priors wood and into the old Boxwood. While going through Thirlmere Wood I noticed a single Foxglove. This meant that the open area in Boxwood would also be full of Foxgloves. We decided to make this the focus of our walk. It’s about 2/3 of a mile to get to what used to be a relatively open space but over the last two or three years now has many young trees 10 to 20 feet tall covering most of it. However, the southern side of the glade still had many foxgloves in a relatively open area. So we stopped to photograph these, it’s always hard to get a meaningful photograph as they’re so slender and tall and thin. We took a few pictures and camera dog was very good apart from walking around the wrong side of tree trunk after tree trunk and having to be turned around and brought back so we could progress. In the end, it was a nice walk, the Sun has gone in and it had clouded over, we were out for about 1 1/4 hours in total.
Saturday 8th June
Box Wood Walk
For a big walk on day three I thought we would head back to boxwood but do the other half of the wood. This I mean, we walk down the hill to the bottom of the wood go all the way along the bottom of the wood until we hit the , dwelling at the far end and then we loop back up to join the midline path and come back with the foxglove Glade on our left-hand side and return as normal.
We met a number of other owners with the dogs, delighted to see that all the dogs are well-behaved and all the owners had them on leads or put them on the leads as soon as they saw Spruce and I. This made for a relaxing and stress free walk. Spruce as usual was excellent didn’t pull, he walked to heel when asked. And for much of the walk. I let him decide where he wanted to go. We stopped and took pictures on the way and these you can see below. As yesterday we were out for about an hour and a quarter, and I guess it was about a 2 mile walk.
Sunday, the 9th of June
Claypit Springs Wood
We went out for a walk about 11 am today the weather had clouded over, It was about 14 or 15°, so ideal for a hairy dog walk. We went out through Serpentine Wood and back into Claypit Springs wood and we took the long outer walk around the wood today. On the return side of the wood we went in to the farmers field, we walked round the field before rejoining the wood right at the end. The other dog walkers not so good today, a couple of dogs having disappeared and the owners calling them and whistling for them. Spruce was very good, he sat while the owners recoveredthe dogs and only then did we proceed. Very disappointing compared with yesterday the owners today had no idea of where the dogs were. A nice walk I got some nice pictures of spruce and took some pictures of the grasses and wildflowers we saw during our walk.
