Winter Walks: Micklemere

'This is what I miss,' Mum said, 'Walks in the crisp winter air.'

Just a little way from Grandma's house is Micklemere, a small lake in marshland that I always wonder about when we drive past. Always placid, glistening in sunlight and usually with birds everywhere, it is a little ocean of quiet beside the highway.

Speaking of highways, I called it a 'big road' and Mum reminded me that I am a Cambridge undergraduate and not a three year old.

We weren't prepared for bird watching, and entered the bird watchers hut beside the mere with no binoculars or bird book which the two people inside the hut had, as they discussed 'merlins' and 'falcons' and probably wondered why on earth we were there at all. So we left them and walked to the Watermill instead so different in winter, but with thick wellies on I still stepped in for my customary paddle. Beside the water were two hippopotamuses and two crocodiles - cleverly cut topiary.

We came across an apple tree on the walk back - the same tree I got the apples for the Christmas Spiced Apple Cake from. We picked as many as our pockets would allow, I got temporarily stuck on some brambles, Hannah found an apple that looked like a butt, and tossed the apples she picked to me with about a fifty percent catch rate (it is difficult to catch when one hand is engaged with holding a camera, and both hands are gloved!) and the sunshine and the apples and the pure joy reminded me of scrumping apples last October.

Over the farmers fields to get home, the fields that I run in in the summer which are too muddy to run in now, but winter wellie boots make squelching through them possible. Shards of ice cover shallow puddles, and other late afternoon walkers say 'Hello, beautiful day, isn't it?' as we pass.

And as we near the end of the fields I look back and the sun is setting, very gently into that good night.