There is not a lot of room to park by the church but we always seem to be lucky here.  The copper beeches were just coming into leaf and looked lovely in the sun.
We started up the road and walked, very carefully, across the A31 to join the footpath just opposite.
The small wood where we turn west at West Morden Farm always seems to have a good, if not exceptional,  display of bluebells as May approaches and this year was no exception.
Further along Morden Lane we were intrigued to see the longest "sausage rolls" of bales we have ever seen.
There were rape fields in full bloom wherever we looked and we remarked how this relatively new crop has changed the look of the countryside at this time of year.  This was a virtually unknown crop "when we were boys"!
Suitable seating was in very short supply and we ended up sitting on a rather narrow fence.  Thank goodness for the spongy padding we keep in our rucksacks.
The walk was pretty good underfoot, in fact better than we had expected until....we crossed the road just before Winterborne Muston.  The "pipe bridge" got us over the stream but the path the other side was under water and we had to resort to clambering through the hedge and walking along the field edge.
The path after this point is none to clear and is not as shown on the OS map.  There are some signs but they are not that easy to follow.  There is a sign showing path heading south towards the road and it might have made our lives easier to have followed this.  It seems impossible to follow the path round the edge of the farm approaching Winterborne Zelston and it appears to have been re-routed between the farm buildings. 
Having arrived safely back at the car we drove into Wimborne for our old favourite gammon, eggs and chips at the Coach and Horses.

Our first walk after a bit of a layoff so we decided to keep it short and easy.
Although it is not a big car park the landlord at the Chequers was quite happy for us to park there while we took a gentle stroll around the marshes.
The first part of the walk is along some quite rural tracks and it was nice to see the blackthorn coming into bloom, an early sign of spring.
​It was a lovely bright sunny day with a bit of a breeze and we were presented with a lovely view as we approached the moorings at Keyhaven.  Here we joined the Solent Way, a well made up path along the top of the embankment protecting the marshes.  The gorse growing along the embankment was stunningly bright in the sunlight.  There were quite a few waders to capture our attention although it would be nice to know what they all were.  We keep saying we must learn to identify them but never seem to get round to it.
We found a grassy bank where we passed a few, or maybe several minutes refreshing ourselves and chatting to a chap who was gathering some earthy material that he said was great for breeding lug worms.
We both had fish pie at the Chequers.  It was full of fish but a shame that there was no smoked haddock.  We feel this is an essential ingredient for a "proper" fish pie. And another thing .... Wikipedia says shandy is BEER mixed with a soft drink.  The barmaid made a ginger beer shandy with ginger beer and lemonade!  Now that's just not on, but I was too thirsty to argue.