What is the best way to start a day’s walking?  Not, perhaps, the two hour drive down to the coast!  But I find I need that two hour drive, because at the end it makes it all the better when I crawl out of the car, stretch, look up, and see this:

Yes, it was going to be a Bright Blue Day today!  Hythe seemed to anticipate this and had hung bunting out as if to greet us and cheer us on our way.  We felt very welcome until we realised nobody was there cheering us!

But if the townsfolk of Hythe didn’t turn out for us, the animals of Hythe certainly did!  Who would have thought that an alpaca would come to say hello?

The donkeys were very friendly…

And cutest little animal of all was the knee-high lamb.

“Oh, those poor things!” I said to my daughter.

“What do you mean?” she asked quizzically.

“Well,” I said, “Those poor little lambs are killed when they’re only weeks old so that you can have a nice dinner”.

Catherine thought a moment.

“Oh,” she said with a mournful empathy that nearly moved me to tears, “But they’re just so tasty…”

Points on this part of the walk (copy and paste the co-ordinates into Google Earth):

• Hythe High Street:  N 50° 52.217 W 001° 23.940
• Farm Animals:  N 50° 51.635 W 001° 23.265

Walk #68 Statistics (of which this post forms the first part):

• Date of Walk: 13 April 2014
• Walk #68 total distance covered: 12.90 miles
• Coast of Britain Walk Total Distance Covered: 576.44 miles
• CLICK HERE FOR LINK TO INTERACTIVE MAP!!!