Honey, tree and shadows

Well tonight’s walk was a lot different than our normal walks. It’s not a new walk, it’s one we’ve done quite often and in tonight’s sunshine it was very nice.
After about 20 minutes of walking alone we encountered a man and a black Labrador, the Labrador was young, just over a year old, but was very friendly, though a touch excitable and boisterous at times. Anyway the man caught up to Darren and they got talking as we were walking along and I was happily running and playing with the Labrador. Darren learnt all sorts about what the man did for a living ( gas and oil ) he’d worked in Russia for a few years, worked in America for a year. His wife and daughter were at bingo that night and the way he relaxed and forgot about everything for awhile was to walk the dog which he very much enjoyed. They kept walking and I kept following with my new friend. We walked in to the woods on the normal walking path and then after awhile the man said he was taking a different path to get back to where we’d come from when first meeting, this was fine for Darren as he needed to head back that way too. This new path was very sludgy in places, it was used by mountain bikers and was very up and down and slippy. The man was always a few steps in front and Darren was being careful where he put his feet as his footwear wasn’t really the best for these conditions. We came to a big dip, it was about 10 or 11 ft deep, again the man went first, after a few seconds going down the dip he slipped and ended up on the floor, he was absolutely fine but was covered in wet mud. Darren took a slightly different route down the, using tree to branches to keep himself upright. He didn’t fall, the walk continued like this up and down for about ten minutes until we eventually got back to the main path, which was a bit of a relief to Darren, he did mention to the man that if he’d been in his own he would have turned around and gone back to the main path, the man agreed and said he was surprised at how slippy the path was. All this time I was playing with the Labrador or on my own behind Darren, but I managed to stay reasonably clean. We eventually parted from the man and the Labrador and continued back to where Darren’s car was parked. I slept well that night :-)