Have you ever got stuck in the mud when you weren't expecting to? It happened to me yesterday.

After weeks worth of downpours, waterlogged fields and overflowing rivers it was actually a fairly decent afternoon, and I decided to take a walk. I expected it to be wet underfoot, but I was confident my favourite Dunlop wellies, indigo jeans and red sweatshirt could cope with anything I ran into (spoiler alert: they couldn't).

I'd done nearly all the walk, and everything had gone to plan. The worst mud I'd encountered was in the corner of one field, where it had been nearly as deep as my boots, but I'd squelched my way through without disaster and made it to marginally more solid ground. There were mud splashes all over my jeans and sweatshirt, but I didn't feel it was so bad people would notice. I was now coming back towards the car park through a patch of woodland, there were a few people walking their dogs or taking their children home after an afternoon's exercise.

When I'd nearly got to the car park, I noticed that the path ran along the edge of a roughly U-shaped valley shaded by trees, with a little stream meandering across the flat surface at the bottom. A bit further on, the path dipped down beside the valley, and there was a slope down with footprints as if people had been walking down to the water's edge. I took the slope, and found myself on the valley floor. The path came down in a boggy patch a little way away from the main stream, I waded it cautiously but it hardly came halfway up my boots. I remember noticing on the far side that someone had been there before me and lost a welly, I could see the top of it sticking out of the mud, but the ground seemed to have dried out since then because my boots were hardly sinking in at all. I'd explored a few of these valleys earlier on the walk, and they'd all seemed the same, a mixture of vegetation, shallow pools of water and equally shallow patches of mud.

Anyway, along the valley I walked, till I was quite a way beyond where I'd come down from the path, and I couldn't see any sign that anyone else had been there. Again, there were patches of mud here and there, but ankle deep at most.

I was crossing one of the mud patches, and I'd just decided that this valley was just like all the others, when suddenly my left leg went straight down into the mud, all the way to the top of the welly. I tried to pull it out, but it seemed to be firmly stuck. Then I tried to shift my stance, which only made matters worse, because my right leg sank into the soft mud too, even further, right up to the knee. I couldn't feel anything solid under either foot. As I tried to pull my right leg free, my left just kept sinking. Both my wellies had gone completely under by now, I could feel the cold mud oozing into them. My left leg felt completely stuck, and my right was still moving -- downward. It felt as if the mud pit might be bottomless. In what seemed like no time I was up to the top of my thighs in this incredibly sticky mud. There seemed to be something under my left foot now, but my right was still in freefall. I tried to pull it up, but that only tipped me over backwards until I was sitting in the mud, feeling the cold sludge slurping around my backside. Fortunately that seemed to spread my weight just enough to stop me sinking further.

The way I was facing, I could see the edge of the valley, and what seemed to be daylight beyond it. I wasn't sure if there was a footpath up there, or maybe just the edge of the woodland. I wasn't sure which was scarier: whether someone would walk along the path and see me crotch-deep in mud, or whether there wasn't anyone and I'd have to call for help. Or ring the Fire Brigade, and end up in the local papers.

Rather than either of those things, I decided to have another go at getting out. There was a tree stump nearby, and I tried reaching for it and pulling myself towards it. But I couldn't make any headway at all in the glutinous sludge. Then I saw a fallen branch, pulled it towards me, and tried to use it to support my hands while I got my legs free, I've done that before when I've got stuck in mud. But this time the mud seemed to have a much stronger grip on my legs, and all that pushing or pulling did was make me dirtier.

At least my left leg seemed to have reached solid ground. Maybe I could use that? I tried to put all my weight on my left leg, and lift my right. The mud around it seemed softer, and after a lot of wriggling I was able to bring my right knee up. The mud in my wellies seemed to be holding them onto my feet, because when I finally managed to free my foot the welly was still on it, looking like a a grey-black blob. I got my foot high enough to slide the branch underneath it, held onto the stump, and pushed down with my right leg. The branch sank slightly, but luckily it held, and my left leg slid slowly upwards out of the mud pit, heavy with grey-black sludge.

Fortunately the bit of ground I'd been facing was firmer than the pit I'd been stuck in, and I was able to stand without sinking in and look down at the state I was in. Apart from a few inches at the top you couldn't see the colour of my jeans under their thick, sticky coating of mud, and my wellies were just as bad. With every step, I could feel they were full of mud on the inside, too. My sweatshirt hadn't escaped either, it had mud slathered all down the front of it, and mucky patches on the arms from trying to pull myself out.

I looked back at the mud pit, and for a moment felt a crazy impulse to jump back in and see if I'd sink even deeper, all the way to the bottom. But I was scared that if I did that, I might get stuck even worse than before. Instead, I squelched back the way I'd come, made it back to the path, and headed for the car park. It felt like a personal walk of shame. I wondered what I'd say if I met anyone and they asked me what had happened, but the only group I passed hardly seemed to notice. Maybe guys covered in mud are more common round there than I thought.