Wild Martins Farm · Field instrument 01
Winston's Mud Index
How much of the High Weald you are likely to carry home, measured in muddy paws by the people who walked it — and, at five paws, by a golden retriever who has done it to himself again.
What this is
A weather forecast for your boots
Every guest who walks here after a wet week arrives at the same question, and no forecast answers it: not whether it will rain, but what the ground is like now. So we asked the walkers. After a walk, a guest rates the mud from one to five paws, adds the route and, if the dog has distinguished itself, a photograph.
The number you see is never one person's opinion. It is the middle of every approved report in the period you have chosen, printed with the count so you can judge how much to trust it. When there are too few walks to average, we say so rather than invent a figure.
It is useful, it is genuinely collected, and it is named after a dog who has never once considered the consequences of a ditch.
The reading
What the ground is doing
Reading the ground…
Where the numbers come from
- A report counts once an estate editor has approved it. Pending and rejected reports are never in the figure.
- Reports are filed against the Europe/London calendar date of the walk, so a period begins and ends on a London midnight.
- One report per walker per day is kept. A repeat reading of the same walk replaces nothing and adds nothing.
- A deleted report leaves the aggregate at once, and every period recomputes from what is left.
- Photographs are reviewed separately from the reading. A reading can count while its photograph is still unpublished.
Report your walk
You have the muddiest evidence
One to five paws, a photograph if the dog has earned one, and which walk it was. That is the whole thing. Your report joins the aggregate once it has been read. It moves the index; it never becomes it.
Photographs are read by a person before anything appears on this page, and location and camera data are stripped in your browser before the picture is even sent.
The scale
One to five muddy paws
Rate the walk you actually did, not the one you meant to do. The scale is deliberately coarse — there is no honest difference between 6.2 and 6.4 out of ten when the measurement instrument is a dog.
11 of 5 paws — Barely muddy
Barely worth mentioning
Shoes remain recognisably shoes. The dog is largely the colour it left in.
22 of 5 paws — Slightly muddy
A little squelchy
Clear evidence of countryside, but nothing a towel and a stern look won't solve.
33 of 5 paws — Moderately muddy
Proper mud
Wellies earn their keep, and the dog grows increasingly pleased with itself.
44 of 5 paws — Very muddy
Serious business
Mud has moved beyond the paws and is eyeing the undercarriage. Mud Daddy recommended.
55 of 5 paws — Extremely muddy
Doing a Winston
Full agricultural conditions. The dog returns roughly twice its original weight and takes the full industrial-hose clean-down in the boot room before being readmitted to polite society.
Five paws is Doing a Winston: full agricultural conditions, a dog no longer recognisable as its own breed, and a Mud Daddy intervention at the boot room door before readmission to polite society.
The Winston Weather Report
Monthly look-backs
Once a month Winston reports on the ground he has covered: what the paw readings did, what the weather did to them, and whether anything of consequence happened to a boot. Estate observation is kept plainly separate from Met Office record throughout.
16 August 2026
The July Winston Report: dry underpaw, dog on strike
We invented a Mud Index and then July removed the mud. The inaugural report is therefore about heat, shade, water, and a golden retriever who twice decided the walk was over before we did.
6 minutes · Read the report
How it is counted
Dull, and therefore trustworthy
The rules are written down because an index nobody can check is just a mood. This is observational data gathered by guests on a fifteen-acre estate — it is not a meteorological record, and where we want one of those we quote the Met Office instead.
Photographs are stripped of location and camera data in your browser before upload, read by a person before publication, and never carry a guest's name.
- A report counts once an estate editor has approved it. Pending and rejected reports are never in the figure.
- Reports are filed against the Europe/London calendar date of the walk, so a period begins and ends on a London midnight.
- One report per walker per day is kept. A repeat reading of the same walk replaces nothing and adds nothing.
- A deleted report leaves the aggregate at once, and every period recomputes from what is left.
- Photographs are reviewed separately from the reading. A reading can count while its photograph is still unpublished.
Elsewhere on the estate
If the ground is against you
Wild Martins Farm
Bird listening, night notes, seasonal wildlife and the guest field instruments for all fifteen acres.
Winston's Friends
The dog-friendly side of the estate, and the wall of dogs who have stayed.
Dog-friendly stays in East Sussex
What a dog actually gets here: boot room, fifteen acres, and walking from the gate.
The Oast
Sleeps four, AGA kitchen, and a boot room built for exactly this problem.
The Journal
Walks, weather, local guides and the occasional agricultural indignity.
Bringing a dog?
Ask Winston
Dogs, mud, walks and the lane to the pub — the estate's golden retriever has answers to the questions guests actually ask.