The Life of a Pack Mule: Rambling with a Baby Carrier

As you may have gathered from this blog, we do a lot of walking and we have a baby daughter called Molly. Taking a baby on a long walk in a carrier is quite pleasant when they are very small. They are light, fall asleep against your chest and it's relatively easy. It gets much more difficult as they get bigger though. It's a bit like starting out carrying a small bag of seed potatoes that slowly grow into a large sack of baking spuds. 

I'd been looking for new places in the local area to go for walks with my wife Stace, baby Molly and our feral little dogs Dottie and Wilf. With the recent bad weather it was likely lots of the areas I'd found would be too muddy to carry a baby along and we didn't want to drive somewhere for the walk to be a total write off. We decided to get the train to Colwall and walk from there over the hills to Great Malvern. We've done that a fair few times before via a beaut of a footpath at the back of Colwall station up to the Wyche Cutting and over the Worcestershire Beacon, but there are loads of other footpaths from Colwall that can take you along different routes to the hills. We opted to go one of those routes this time.

The baby carrier we have has options to fit the child on your front or back depending on their size. The last time we went up the hills with Molly attached to my front it was an absolute nightmare of a walk. It wasn't compatible at all with my posture and within minutes of uphill walking I found myself in pain because of the awkward walking position. I started to feel that same discomfort when I carried Molly to Ledbury station for the short journey to Colwall and realised this walk might not be much fun. When we got to Colwall, we stopped outside the local shop and switched the carrier so she was on my back. On the first attempt it didn't look quite right. 

In the end we managed to get Molly into a position that didn't look like something from a sci-fi horror film and it was so much easier walking with her on my back. I'm used to carrying heavy backpacks and this just felt way better. I would confidently be able to do pirouettes like this if I had the co-ordination and ability. I don't, so I didn't. We moved up the main road through Colwall that rises up towards the Malverns, looking for the entrance to the first footpath I'd found on our local map. The paths were scenic and quiet. On a sunny day like that it was great to be out walking again. 

The footpaths took us round the back of the houses that run alongside the road through Colwall and then it gradually started to get steeper as we approached Colwall Coppice. I'm always keen to try and find paths through woodland. Even though you could see the hills better outside the woods, I just quite enjoy being amongst the trees. I feel closer to nature and more distant from a crumbling world full of dickheads when I'm in the woods. Colwall Coppice isn't particularly large, but with the sun shining through the trees it was beautiful. 

After Colwall Coppice the paths get quite a bit steeper as you head up towards West Malvern. It became less comfortable carrying the baby and from the photos my wife took it was fairly clear that we still hadn't got Molly in the best position. It's a really good carrier by Ergobaby that was gifted to us by our sister in law. I reckon that young Molly was getting too big for it now though and even though she was comfortable enough to fall asleep, her head wasn't supported that well when she was sleeping on my back and we decided we should perhaps get something a bit larger for longer walks. Unsurprisingly there aren't any baby product shops in the woods of Colwall and we didn't have internet connection to look up how best to adjust the carrier so we'd have to carry on with the slightly awkward walk. Molly was fine though, dozing away.  

We walked up the steep footpaths to West Malvern then along the pavements towards the West of England Quarry car park. I hadn't been this way up the hills before and it was a great route. Not quite as steep as some of the paths up from Great Malvern and cracking view of the Herefordshire countryside (which in my massively biased opinion is much nicer than the view of Worcestershire the other side of the hills). It was really quiet this way too. The only people we saw were a couple of men in their seventies that were walking along at a ridiculously fast pace. I guess living on a hillside helps get you fit and healthy. 

We made it to up to the top of the hills relatively easily and Molly remained asleep. It was quite a busy day as it was a rare sunny weekend for this time of year. We didn't spend much time up there as we were just out for a nice long walk. We planned to get to Malvern in decent time so we could get lunch somewhere in town and have a few drinks. 

Great Malvern is a nice town to go to spend time watching the world go by. There are lots of good pubs and cafes and the people of Malvern are generally decent and friendly. We went to the Alturo Lounge for lunch which is relatively new to Malvern and owned by the same group that run Cozy Club. It's a cracking place that has a decent menu and a great selection of drinks. We just had to find somewhere to sit away from other people walking by with dogs. Our terriers Dottie and Wilf are a nightmare in that situation and will bark loudly at any dog attempting to enter their new temporary territory. It has only gotten worse since baby Molly was born and immediately became a part of the pack that needed to be protected. These dogs absolutely love that little girl. 

Dottie and Wilf have never been that friendly with other dogs unless they recognise them. It's like they've adopted the typical small town attitude where people will share an "Alright mate?! Not so bad" passing chat with someone they have seen before. If the person doesn't appear to be a local though, they are looked upon as some sort of intruder. Before Molly was born, Stace would usually walk the dogs because she enjoyed it, but I've now taken on the dog walker role. In Ledbury, if I see someone else with a dog approaching, I just have to look down at Dottie to know if I'm going to be able to stop for a nice chat or have to apologise. If her tail is wagging, she recognises the dog as a fellow local and all will be fine. If she looks alert but tentative, I know the dog hasn't been recognised as a local and Dottie is likely to bark like mad and try and drag me around in circles, which in turn makes Wilf start to act like an arse as well.  

We walked to the very back of this large bar/restaurant. There was a perfect table tucked away with little view of the rest of the establishment. Unfortunately it was occupied, so we had to sit at a crap little table that was about 1ft high and basically watch the people finish their drinks in the hope that they would leave soon so we could properly relax and have lunch. Thankfully they did leave and we had some tasty burgers and a few deserved drinks. Molly definitely seemed unsure about the taste of a gherkin though. We had to go and catch our train so packed up and headed down the hill to great Malvern station. I had a catch up with my good friend Edward Elgar on the way. We got back to Ledbury and were treated to a glorious sunset on the way home. It had been a brilliant day. We definitely needed to get a more solid baby carrier though for these sorts of walks in the future. 

Stace loves looking for a bargain and managed to pick up a LittleLife Voyager carrier on Facebook Marketplace for £15. I preferred the idea of getting one new. It had been used and had a rip in one of the pockets, but these things are towards £200 new so it was probably worth £15 just to give it a try. I'm the sort of idiot that will just buy what I want for an inflated price on Amazon, realise I don't like it, then never send it back. 

The carrier looked great but the weather forecast for the weekend wasn't so great. It was basically going to rain from Friday evening through to Sunday evening. Wonderful. The Saturday forecast was the least shite so we thought we'd go for a short walk up the woods to test out the new carrier. This was so much better. It doesn't matter that much if a carrier is a little heavy if it means you can distribute the weight properly and feel comfortable. A comfortable carrier that weighs 2kg is far better than an uncomfortable one that weighs 0.5Kg. I know from carrying heavy rucksacks, that you want 80% of the weight on your hips, with your shoulders essentially just keeping everything vertical. You should easily be able to get your thumbs under the shoulder straps with a full load on board if you've got things right. If the hip supports aren't thick and easily load bearing, it's not going to be as easy as it should be. 

This was just like walking on a hike with my camping kit. I was in my element. Queen Molly looked happy with her new throne carriage and the donkey carrying it was happy too. 

The expected rain never really started, so we turned the planned short walk into quite a long one. We walked up "the line" which is a path along what used to be the old Ledbury to Gloucester railway line which was closed by that absolute wanker Dr Richard Beeching in the 1960s, along with thousands of miles of other railways across the country. There used to be 54 train stations in the county of Herefordshire and nowadays there are just 4 (four) stations that remain. I reckon some of those stations would have barely served one house, so I get that it was perhaps OTT. Although you could once get a train that ran down the Wye Valley from Ross-on-Wye, through Symonds Yat and on to Monmouth. Imagine how beautiful that journey would be and how much tourism trade it would bring. Daft.

We got to the end of "the line" and then made our way towards Dog Hill Wood. The rain still didn't come so we went along the Worcester Road from Dog Hill and into the Conigree Wood a way we hadn't gone before. 

Molly eventually woke up from a slumber and was in a far better position than with the previous carrier to take in the scenery around her. She looked far more comfortable and it was just much better for us. 

I really enjoyed that walk. I think we went about 3 miles in the end, but I'd have happily walked 10 miles with this new carrier. Molly is only going to get bigger so it is only going to get more challenging to go out rambling, but for the time-being it's all good. Hopefully we get some nicer weekends soon so we can get back to exploring other areas of the county. 

Below is a photo summary of the evolution of carrying Molly.

1 month old

4 months old

7 months old

18 months old

Have a good week.