The other week, I was on a walk, not dressed for WAM, and I came to a place where there's usually a muddy pit beside the path. Thanks to the dry summer, it had dried out completely, and I risked exploring in my walking shoes. It all seemed completely dry underfoot, then suddenly I felt the ground get soft under me and the tips of my shoes started to sink. I stumbled forward, landing on one knee in the damp soil, and made my way back to firmer ground with no more than a few stains on my shoes and trousers.

Of course, I didn't leave it there.

The next week, I went back. The mud hadn't seemed that deep, but I wore a pair of wellies just in case, and the walking clothes I had to hand: maroon jeans, blue hoodie and orange puffer jacket.

I through the woods walked back to where I'd been exploring. It all still looked completely dry, dotted with fallen leaves. I could see a few shallow marks my shoes had left the previous time, and I walked in that direction.

Then my right leg went straight down into what had seemed like solid ground, right up to the knee. I tried to keep my balance, but within seconds my other leg had gone in too, and I was over my knees in stinking ooze. It was pretty clear that what I'd been walking on was only a thin crust over deep brown sludge, and once my boots had gone through the crust there was nothing to stop them sinking.

I managed to work myself out of the muck, which took me a few minutes. My jeans were brown from the knees down, and of course my wellies were full of the sludge too.

The sensible thing to do would have been to head back the way I came. But I decided my trousers were already mucky, so what the hell. I kept going. The ground still looked dry but I could feel the bog moving under the surface crust, and hear the squelching.

Then the ground gave way again and my left leg went straight down, all the way to the crotch. I struggled to get my right leg under me, but of course that just sank too. I was up to my arse in the cold sludge, and couldn't feel anything solid under my feet. My struggles just loosened up the mud, and before long it had risen past my waist and was lapping at the bottom of my hoodie.

I managed to work myself out again, wondering all the time what would happen if someone happened to pass on the footpath while I was struggling in the mud. As it happened, nobody did, and I was eventually able to get out, completely brown from the waist down, and with my hoodie smeared and stained too. I'd taken off my jacket while struggling, and I put it back on to cover up some of the muck while walking back to the car. It didn't help much. The route took me through a housing estate at one point, and I did pass a couple of people, but they didn't make any comment about me being covered in mud from the waist down.

After I'd been through the housing estate I was back in the woods again, and the path came to another dried-up mud pit. I figured I couldn't get any muddier, so I explored that as well. There were footprints that suggested someone else had been there before me, and at one point I found what looked like a pair of muddy Speedos lying on the surface. Or maybe underpants, or the bottom half of a bikini - they were so mucky I couldn't really tell. Maybe some wild creature had pinched them off a washing line and dropped them there or maybe I wasn't the first WAMmer to pass that way. Just like in the first mud pit, my welly went through the crust and I ended up waist-deep in seemingly bottomless sludge again, but I was already mucky enough that it didn't make that much of a difference. Once I'd got clear of that, I headed back in the direction of the car park.

My route took me near a patch of waterlogged ground. I'd explored it before and it had never come over the top of my wellies, so since I was already so muddy I decided it wouldn't matter if I walked right through it. Sure enough my wellies were (barely) enough to cope with it, but the consistency was incredibly thick and sticky. This wasn't like the brown sludge in the other mud pits. This was heavy, gloopy clay, and it wouldn't let me go. When I tried to pull my boots out, they went under altogether, and I felt the clay oozing down inside them. Within minutes I was up to my thighs and thoroughly stuck. I tried squirming this way and that, with the suction nearly pulling the wellies off my feet. After what seemed like forever I had to lie down in the muck and drag myself out. My trousers were caked with thick clay, and the front of my hoodie was now a fetching shade of brown.

Before I could make it back to the car and change out of my muddy clothes, I had to walk back along another street, plastered from the chest down in a mixture of bog mud and slimy clay. There were quite a few people around, but they all seemed too polite to comment on my filthy state.

At least if I happen to go there again I'll have a better idea what to expect. But there's a lot of cleanup to get through first...

(I've attached a few pictures here, but you can see more in the album 'Deeper Than I Thought' on my profile)