Walks with my dogs - Shoreham Woods

This is a good walk but really muddy in the winter so not one we do much between November and February unless the ground is really frozen. I don't park in the public carpark but in the layby at the top of Polhill by the now closed Polhill Arms pub and take the bridleway around the back of the pub and across the M25 via the really high footbridge. It takes about an hour and once you are through the woods the views across Shoreham and back towards Sevenoaks are lovely. Once across the bridge I turn left and walk through the woods until it opens up and there is a field with a stile in the corner and follow the path diagonally across admiring the views on the way down plus trying to prevent Suzi from rolling in the sheep poo that always seems really fresh but I've never actually seen any sheep in the field ever. Unfortunatley today was not a good day for stopping her and this is what she looked like after I had taken the picture above. In the far corner of the field there is another stile and a path that follows the valley and overlooks the village of Shoreham and eventually passes just above the white cross carved into the hill in honour of villagers lost in WW1. If you follow this path until you get to a gate you can turn left just after it and follow the path back to the motorway bridge and back to the car. The trees are taking ages to change colour so hopefully we'll get some frost soon which may encourage them a bit as I would love to take some pictures across the valley showing all the gorgeous colours. Took a few piccies of Tom looking as handsome as ever. Plus one quenching his thirst after eating some horse poo (what lovely dogs I have)



Went to a training session with Mac & Wendy Card yesterday, it was just for small dogs and was great fun, everyone enjoyed themselves enormously and even more so when the home made cakes came out at half time.

To start with Mac and Wendy wanted us to run a complete course so they could get some idea of how we and our dogs ran. The video below is our first run and ignoring the obviously crap handling out of the tunnel see if you can see the other glaring mistake.



Tom is really creeping his dog walk at the moment so at a suggestion from Wendy I have started using his target lid again but it's now placed further away from the contact to encourage him to run through before stopping. I know it was only one session but it really seemed to work so I will be using it all this winter and we will see where we go into next season.