The other week, as I plodded through the woods, I saw a tortoise.

It’s probably important to note at this point that I don’t run with my glasses on, and as a result it’s a little like looking at the word through a lens that has been lightly smeared in Vaseline.

I took a photo of the tortoise from a distance for context:

And approached, wondering how I could best transport it with two running harnesses and a lead.  It could be a marginally slower trip home than usual.  But it tuned out it wasn’t a tortoise…it was – as I later found out – a ‘burr’.  A Burr is a growth on a tree formed by stress.  No wonder I felt an automatic affinity with it.

But I left my tortoise there.

And the next day I was so relieved to see it again, I hid it so nobody would take it and I could check in on it on my plods.

By the time we’d moved on a few days I’d got a bit obsessive and as I approached this time, I decided tortoise or not, it was coming home with me.  I had 4km left…through the woods, an open field, across a couple of main roads, over a bridge , through a nature reserve and down my road.  I wasn’t sure if I might be stealing.  So – having watched a fair few episodes of ‘Caught on Camera’ and therefore having learned from the best -, I concealed tortoise down my top.

It was a bit conspicuous.  So I decided to carry him and if I passed anyone I pretended I was using him as a weight to enhance my plod. I mostly got away with that which was a good thing as the one person who did stop me and heard all of the above suggested that if I’d not started, I should go home and have a couple of drinks…

Anyway, we made it. Mr R and Stepson 2 didn’t seem to know what to make of it, but I just got on with giving tortoise a scrub as I had a plan…

…And this was my plan.  Meet our new pet, Gwynn:

I’ll tell you why ‘Gwyn’ in a post another day.  that’s probably enough for now 🙂

Happy Friday 😁