I keep blowin' down the road

'Sorry, Jean, I can't get a fucking signal so no, I don't know how far it is to the bloody pub.'

'Yes, and my stockings have chafed something rotten.'

'Jilly, I hope you've got a charger in that massive backpack, you prim old tart; if we miss the X-Factor results, I'll swing for someone.'

This year, I needed more local walks, and being bone idle, thought it would be useful to wander along behind a random group of old folk in bobble hats, secretly recording the route on my whizzy app and then smugly take family, dog and visitors to unexplored parts of this beautiful bit of coast I call home.

I joined the Ramblers.

I did wonder quite how gentle a stroll it would be when I wandered up to my first walk to be publicly admonished for wearing trainers and not carrying waterproofs.  It was at the height of this recent tropical summer, but apparently we are like the Scouts and need to be prepared for absolutely everything.

When we broke for lunch, I secretly pulled a Diet Coke out of my pocket and watched as they unwrapped sandwiches in paper, for all the world like Enid Blyton people; one old darling had stolen a teaspoon from the cafe at the supermarket because they wanted over two pounds for a wrap, whatever the Dickens that was, so he'd gone for a reduced-out-of-date tin of sardines for his bait. They called him all sorts over that piece of parsimony. He smirked in the sun and ate his sardines with the contraband cutlery and enormous relish.  With extreme care, the rest folded their waxed paper and banana skins back into Tupperware, and shared tartan thermoses and malt cake.

I am pretty fit, but I have to say I was struggling to make conversation by the end of an extremely brisk ten miles.

Nest time I showed up in proper boots with a rucksack and cake.  They softened perceptibly.  There was an influx of youth on the roads because of our Festival and they told me great stories about the times they all went in the 1960s - 'we had two kinds of drugs, beer and booze.' 'We had a damn sight more than that, Martin, we just never gave you any.'

I have learned wonderful useful things; the names of wildflowers and the calls of birds; the fiercely fought invisible battles between the Footpath Society and landowners; how to mend parts of a Morris Minor with unravelled barbed wire; how to avoid paying for car-parking within a fifty mile radius of my home; the dignity and bravery of the elderly and recently bereaved who are determined not to die of unhappiness and loneliness; the astonishment of laughing myself sick at unspeakably profane jokes told by a twinkly and apple-cheeked old lady.

It's the last ramble until the New Year tomorrow; fifteen miles of gloriously dank December dun. I hope they'll all still be there in January as I have grown to love them all very dearly.  Apart from the one who asked me how old my grandchildren were, the blind old bat.