The National Forest Way, Stage Three

Saturday 13th September 2014

Thornton Reservoir to Sence Valley

Last year I started walking the newly opened National Forest Way and did one stage each month. By September I was up to stage three and was entering ‘King Coal’ country, where the famous ‘black gold’ has been mined for centuries. After the coal mines started closing down in this area in the Nineties, a plan was devised to turn the scarred landscape left behind into a network of woods and nature reserves covering an area of the East Midlands that had previously few trees. At the end of the second stage I had reached the village of Thornton, so that is where I now started, at the reservoir that lies beside the village. After walking along the dam I proceeded along the track that follows the edge of the reservoir and only then realised that I had been there before. I had done a walk around this reservoir five years ago, and just as then I had an enjoyable walk in the morning sunshine around the small reservoir with many late summer wildflowers adding to the pretty picture.

At the western end of the reservoir I turned right onto the route that I had taken the previous month, but soon turned off into Browns Wood to follow a diagonal right-of-way across a typical National Forest wood. Somehow I made a wrong turning and ended up back on my previous month's route in the north-eastern corner, which necessitated a confused retreat back through the wood until I found the gap in the hedge that I’d missed before. Another path took me through a young wood called the Partings and eventually brought me to the village of Stanton under Bardon. After my earlier navigational confusion I was now in more familiar territory as I climbed onto the top of the wooded embankment that screens New Cliffe Hill Quarry. This young woodland is enjoyable to walk through and even more delightful for me was a large meadow filled with many wildflowers of different colours and shapes.

I was entranced as I took many photos, some even while lying along the ground to get a close-up of the flowers. However my earlier wanderings in Browns Wood and now my fascination with the wildflowers had occupied a lot of time and I still had a long way to go just to get onto the National Forest Way. I had planned on diverting to the top of Bardon Hill, the highest point in Leicestershire, but since it was already past midday I bypassed all of that and made my way as fast as I could towards Sence Valley Park. I continued to skirt the edge of the quarry even though the landscape was now considerably less interesting. After crossing a road I took a path that runs between an industrial park and the railway line to the quarry. This path was seriously overgrown with rosebay willowherb that was shedding its feathering seed all over me as I struggled along the path until finally I came down to and across the railway line.

I was mindful of the advancing clock because I needed to go to work once I’d finished this walk, so I didn’t want to be late. I rushed through dull scenery eventually reaching a relatively large area of woodland full of young trees, but I was in far too much of a hurry to linger as I quickly passed through until I reached the Overton Road at the far end of the wood. A walk along the road through the edge of Ibstock and along the road towards Heather brought me to Sence Valley Forest Park. This was once part of a large opencast coal mine, but has now been transformed into a delightful nature reserve with three lakes below steep wooded slopes that has turned the area from a black scar into a wonderful green bowl. I had never been to Sence Valley Park before, but I was immediately mesmerised as I paused from my headlong dash to have my lunch. Sadly I couldn’t linger in this fascinating place as I needed to get back to Thornton as quickly as possible and I still hadn’t started stage three of the National Forest Way.

From the upper car park at Sence Valley I finally began stage three by walking down to a byway that skirts the park and following that across the main road towards Kelham Bridge Nature Reserve. I had been hoping to see some interesting wildlife during my traverse, but the footpath that I was following doesn’t seem to actually go through the reserve so the best that I was able to see was a distant view of a disused railway bridge, presumably the eponymous Kelham Bridge. On the other side of the reserve I came to the small village of Donington le Heath where the National Forest Way turns south at a right angle and heads through boring farmland and the village of Ellistown until it eventually reaches Common Hill Wood, part of the large woodland that I had raced through earlier. At that time I had been heading from east to west, but now I crossed my earlier path at right angles heading from north to south. The trail passes through Workman’s Wood on its way to Battram Wood at the southern end of the woodland.

I was still rushing as I was now convinced that unless I ran the last several miles, then I would be late for work, so the remainder of this walk passed in a blur. When I reached Bagworth I abandoned the route of the National Forest Way in favour of a more direct route onto Heath Road and through Bagworth Heath Woods on the route of the Leicestershire Round. After crossing the railway line again I climbed up to the village of Thornton and then back down to the perimeter path of Thornton Reservoir which I followed back to my car. The linking route that I had devised to get me back to the start on this walk was far too long for the time that I had, but more significantly I had done this stage in an easterly direction even though I was actually doing the National Forest Way in a westerly direction. Once I’d realised that this walk was going to take too long it started to pass in a blur so that now I remember little of it, and I never technically completed the whole route of the stage.