Day 31 Our final walk of January - "Beating the Bounds" of Somerton

So we reach the final day of January on our "Walk 500 miles Challenge" and are already well ahead of target. And our final walk of the month saw Mary exceed 100 miles for her first month with Ian just a little further back on 83 miles (walks missed due to set building for Somerton Dramatic Society's "Alice in Wonderland" production every weekend in January). If maintained both of these would reach 1,000 miles over a full year!

Today we combined two of our local walks - the back of Somerton walk and round the valley.  This walk, as the picture shows, completes a circumnavigation of most of the built up area of the town with an extension along the Cary Valley. At least it remained dry and was very mild so we were largely overdressed. But we kept a good pace and in spite of a late start were home for lunch.

I have named this walk the "Beating of the Bounds" after the ancient custom of walking the boundaries of the community by a group including both young and old, often accompanied or led by the parish priest and church officials. The purpose of the walk was to ensure that, in an age where maps were unreliable (if they existed at all) the knowledge of the extent of the parish was passed from one generation to the next. Checking the boundaries was a way of preventing encroachment by neighbours; sometimes boundary markers would be moved, or lines obscured, and a folk memory of the true extent of the parish was necessary to maintain integrity of borders by embedding knowledge in oral traditions. 

5 miles