Clent Hills

HAPPY NEW YEAR!

I know it has been a while since I posted, but it is honestly because nothing has been going on in my life that is terribly interesting.

New Years was fun. Andrea and I watched 22 Jump street then went to the park across the road where we could see the fireworks going off all around the city at midnight. It was really awesome actually. Then we went home and back to bed. Goodness we are getting old....

Anyways since then it was all extremely stressful term papers being due and then starting the new term. BUT this past weekend I actually did something worth blogging about!

I went on another hike! Exciting, no? This was the first trip of the new term for the university hiking society, so there were a lot of people there. We went to the relatively easy hiking location of Clent Hills.

Now, in a place that is as generally flat as England is, you can pretty much guarantee that any hill has had a lot of interesting history happen on it, and Clent Hills are no exception. They were the location of a battle between ancient Britons and Romans, they used to hold beacons that were used to warn Queen Victoria of Spanish invasion, and was the home of an eccentric 1700's noble that liked to build things that looked ancient but were really not. A few examples of these were a massive, Egyptian, style obelisk, some standing stones, and an actual castle that was meant to look like castle ruins. This guy was odd.

Anyways to my experience! The specific hill we climbed was Walton Hill. The trip started out with awkwardly walking through a bunch of nice looking neighborhoods before we finally made it to the base of the hill. All week the weather had been calling for snow and rain, but the day actually turned out to be extremely sunny all day long!

It was super muddy, and my shoes paid the price for it. We ran across several horses that looked like they were trail rental horses, and it made me remember how much I miss riding.


The hike was never particularly hard, but the scenery was great. You could see for miles from pretty much any point on the hike! The forest we walked through was also beautiful. The trees seemed to glow green because of the moss on them.

When we got to the top we saw the replica standing stones, which everyone tried to stand on top of. I nearly lost Andrea for a while because she wandered off...again. She does that a lot.

The hike down was rough on the knees, but the sunset we saw was magnificent, and very purple. However with the sun went the warmth, and we started to get a bit chilly. Luckily we made it back to the train station before it got too cold.

The big achievement was the day was I GOT A VERY MILD SUNBURN. IN ENGLAND IN JANUARY! WHAT IS THAT? I was actually please about it because it meant I got sun for the first time in months. Anyways, till next time my friends!