Distance: 6.5km
Accessibility: Steep drops, dirt tracks, foliage at head/chest height.
Landscape: Ancient woodlands.
Goodbye Butter Mouse!
My apologies if those words hurt. Your support over all these years is appreciated a million times over. The reason I am able to write these words because of you.
But that is the end of the Butter Mouse for now. We will leave him at the top of the snow covered mountain, drinking hot chocolate with his friends.
This year will be my holiday. As you may have read on my website, I moved to The House In The Woods late year, leaving the City House, where I wrote all the Butter Mouse’s adventures. This was a fresh start in location and mindset.
My aim had been to spend the year painting the house, sorting my archives, and enjoying the lush countryside around my new abode. You have to remember, we have released a brand new Butter Mouse story every two years for the past twenty five years. And that is not including the Christmas annuals, the scripts for the television show, and the brief run of comics at the turn of the Millenium. That is a whole lot of Butter Mouse, even for me!
Then when planning my first journey, I noticed the walking routes around here had distinctive names. They must be Iron Age, or possibly even older. I started listing then down, to prepare for my weekly walks. Before long I had twenty six routes with origins dating back over a thousand years.
A new project tore apart my plans for relaxation. I divided this gentle year into bi-monthly in my exercise book, the kind used for every Butter Mouse rough draft. I then wrote down the following commands to myself on the inside cover:
-You will complete a walk every two weeks.
-You will write up your experiences by the light of the moon that very evening.
-You will send a draft of these walks to your agent in the last week of December.
If I have kept to these promises dear reader, then this is the book you hold in your hands.
Never fear if you must have some Butter Mouse. Alongside my walks and a sprinkle of local history, I will throw in some memoirs, and a history of my little friend came to life. That mouse cannot leave me be!
Part biography, part walking guide, this is how I ended up with a pair of new walking boots, and sudden end to my retirement.
The moon is bright and round. I sip on a dram of whisky that dances with an ice cube.
Join me in the forest.
:::Sorry Barbara, this might be a tricky one to edit! The following chapters will get to the point quicker than this one. You won’t believe what I found in the woods!
Thought you might like the photo I took too. Perhaps they could go in the middle on glossy paper? The colours are nice anyway!:::
