MUD.

My impatience and wishful thinking for springtime got the better of me the other day.  

I got inspired to try a new trail, put my pretty new boots on and took the Piccadilly Line to the very last stop.  

The London LOOP trail- London Outer Orbital Path- is 150 miles of trails that takes a walker around the outer suburbs of London, mostly through green spaces and parks.  It's broken down into 24 easy-to-reach sections with train and tube stations as your start and end points.  How nice is that?

Most people who fly into Heathrow end up taking the Piccadilly line towards Cockfosters, so it's the train that everyone knows (and giggles at the name) as soon as they get to London.  However, taking the tube out there was quite nice as we ended up having the entire train car to ourselves for most of the trip and celebrated this rare occurrence by singing and dancing loudly and erratically.  

Down the muddy lanes, we took off- the trail is right outside the tube station- and it soon became apparent that even on a nice winter day, it was still winter out.

The mud, the mud, the mud.  It made the going awful.  Despite the way being fairly flat, every step was a slippery mess, and sometimes so sloppy walking became treacherous.

It wasn't long until I had mud coming up over my socks and most of the way to me knees.  This was exhausting work.

Still, we did 10 miles, and it felt more like 20.  The sticky clay mud weighed us down, and later, it took me hours to get the boots cleaned off.

While parts of the trail were kind of pretty- much of it went through small stretches of forest, parkland and farm fields- I found myself terribly bored after just a few miles and ready to be done already.

From a hill in Enfield, the city punctured the horizon.

We were so tired and cold and exhausted at the end, we canceled our dinner plans and curled up on the sofa with Netflix and hot soup for the night.

The trail was understandably quiet- we only passed two other couples on the trail all day.  What, no one wants to join us in cold slogging misery?  Until the springtime winds and sun dry up the bogs a bit, I think I'll not do this again any time soon.  Yes, I have a big walk planned in a month and I want to get the boots broken in and not die on the first 16 mile stretch, but I think I'll stick to the pavement for a bit.