Walk on the wild side goes awry (From Bradford Telegraph and Argus)

Walk on the wild side goes awry

8:41am Friday 15th January 2010 in

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The snow is finally melting, there have been signs of something round and vaguely bright behind the clouds, and that herd of Woolly Mammoths that’s been fouling the pavements in our street looks like it might finally be moving on to Scotland.

Notwithstanding those veterans who have been walking around muttering, “Call this snow? Back in 1963 the only way we could get out of the house was to climb out of the bedroom window, and even then the schools didn’t shut. We still haven’t seen Mr Higginbotham the maths teacher, nearly half a century on”, we can safely say that it’s been a bit of a snowpocalypse.

After the snow gave way to ice earlier this week it looked like Pilkington’s had been round in the night and glazed our street, our cars and any cats that might have been standing still for too long. Not being Eddie “the Eagle” Edwards, I didn’t fancy taking the car down a ski jump so was faced with the prospect of walking six miles to work.

I kissed the wife and kids goodbye, packed a couple of satsumas left over from Christmas and set off with a Captain Oates-style announcement that I might be gone some time.

For someone who always drives to work apart from the odd occasion when I’ve taken a bus (there were none running on Wednesday morning) it was quite an education, striding freely in the great outdoors, my feet crunching in virgin snow, icy fresh air knifing into my lungs.

Then I got to the bottom of our street and the novelty wore off, with still just under six miles to go.

As I tramped through the slush I recalled that more outdoorsy types at work had spoken of a short-cut through some woods that shaved off quite a bit of the long walk to work. At the mouth of the woods, I decided to give it a whirl.

Big mistake. At first the woods looked all Narnia-ish, snow and trees and squirrels. Within five minutes I suddenly felt like the idiot in a horror film who, yes, goes wandering into the woods while the cinema audience is shouting: “No! You plonker! Don’t go in there!”

There wasn’t a soul around. A hundred yards in I could see no signs of life, apart from a sign that pointed out the path was forking in two directions. Helpfully, both fingerposts said “circular route”, which wasn’t my intended destination. One path went up. One went down. I chose the left path, which went up, on the basis that if I got lost I might at least be able to see civilisation.

About an hour later, after wandering across a golf course and falling flat on my backside on an icy street, I emerged on the same road, a little further down. I reckon it would have taken me half the time to walk if I’d stuck on the road.

Fortunately, one of the few buses still running pulled up and I staggered gratefully on board. So much for the great outdoors, and manfully battling into work.