The National Forest Way, stage eight

Saturday 26th April 2015

Conkers to the Rosliston Forestry Centre

I spent last spring walking sections of the National Forest Way, a long-distance trail that has recently been created through the National Forest, a regeneration project that has led to the creation of new woodland across two hundred square miles of Derbyshire, Leicestershire and Staffordshire linking the ancient forests of Needwood and Charnwood. I have been walking in Charnwood Forest for many years, and as soon as I heard of the creation of this walk the opportunity to explore the neighbouring countryside was hard for me to miss. By Easter of last year I had reached the heart of the National Forest at the Conkers Waterside Centre, and so that was where I started this stage of the walk by parking nearby at Sarah’s Wood. The first thing I noticed when I got out of my car was an astonishing number of cowslips littering the ground in this small wood. Cowslips are rarer now than they used to be and I had never before seen such a dense array of these delicate looking plants.

Following the last couple of hundred metres of the previous stage of the trail I returned to the Conkers Waterside Centre alongside the large terminus of the Ashby Canal. To start stage eight of the National Forest Way I followed my steps of the previous month onto the Ashby Woulds Heritage Trail until I reached the disused railway, which I crossed over and after walking past a youth hostel and campsite followed a tree lined path onto a road. I then had to endure a tedious walk along this road that brought me to the village of Overseal and at the southern tip I was finally able to leave the houses behind and venture off into the countryside, and I couldn’t be happier. I was elated to be walking on this warm spring morning despite grey skies overhead that threatened rain. I soon entered Cadborough Hill Wood, a young wood typical of the National Forest and similar to many that I had already seen in my travels on this trail. The wood wasn’t drawing my eye; rather it was the multitude of dandelions that covered the grass borders in a sea of green and yellow.

Dandelions are not the most beautiful flower in the world and are usually considered a weed when in your garden, but here they enlivened what would have been a dull scene. Above a pond was an established wood, on the steep slopes of Cadborough Hill, and this time it was the gorse between the wood and the pond that added colour to my walk. At the far end of the wood I reached a road on the outskirts of Netherseal, but before entering the village I turned off beside a playing field and entered an arable field full of yellow-flowered oilseed rape. The colour yellow seemed to be dominating my walk in all the flowers I was seeing, and I have found in the past that at certain times of the year certain colours seem to be dominant in the countryside. Yellow may have been the colour at this point, but I would soon encounter an early glimpse of the blues of May. After a bit of confusion at the recently planted woodland around Grangewood Hall I came upon the ancient woodland of Grange Wood, which was both enticing and frustrating.

The floor of this amazing wood was covered with wild flowers including lesser celandine and wild garlic, but most noticeably, extensively, and enticingly, bluebells were abundantly distributed throughout the woodland floor. However, there is no public access into the wood so I was forced to gaze longingly from the footpath in the field beside the wood. I suppose if there was public access to this wood then these gorgeous woodland flowers that I so adore would be trampled and the display would not be as extensive as it is. With this thought in my mind I continued along the path into newer woods that didn’t have the wildflower displays that I had found in Grange Wood. After passing through Top Wood, Penguin Wood and through arable fields I finally reached the outskirts of the Rosliston Forestry Centre, but rather than heading straight towards the Visitor Centre the trail takes a roundabout route through quiet woodland before eventually turning towards the heart of the park.

As I neared the Visitor Centre I tried to explore the park a little and visit some of the signposted attractions, but when I saw that their Bluebell Memorial Woods had no flowers I disconsolately made my way to the car park. It had been my plan to catch a bus from the Forestry Centre, but when I couldn’t find a bus stop outside the park I made my way south into the village of Rosliston. When I finally found a bus stop I discovered that I had just missed a bus and the next one wasn’t for another two hours. I had planned on catching a bus to the town of Swadlincote and from there to walk back to Conkers, but since that plan was blown I returned to the route of the National Forest Way, on the edge of the Forestry Centre backtracking myself as rain finally began to fall following the trail as far as Penguin Wood. On the dandelion-lined road immediately after the wood I turned left along this as far as a footpath that took me over a disused mineral railway and through Long Close Wood.

I was following as straight a route as I could make between Rosliston and Conkers and once I was through Long Close Wood and onto Colliery Lane I had little or no interest in the walk. Sealwood Lane brought me to the outskirts of Overseal where a long walk along the pavement through the village took me back onto the route of the National Forest Way. With rain falling off and on throughout the afternoon I wasn’t too bothered about the way this walk had ended.  By this point in my trek along the National Forest Way I was beginning to lose interest and it was only briefly that it would awaken. The new woodlands that are typical of the National Forest are not established enough to contain woodland flowers and ancient woodlands are rare in this part of the East Midlands. When I did encounter them they were even more special due to their rarity and even more enthralling.

The National Forest Way, stage seven

Saturday 28th March 2015

Smisby to the Conkers Waterside Centre

I had such a great walk three weeks previously on the National Forest Way I was eager to return to the trail and continue my trek. I had started to walk the trail the previous summer, soon after it had opened, but a long break over the autumn and winter meant that by the start of the following spring I was still less than half way through. At the beginning of March I walked stages five, six and, although I hadn’t planned on it, part of stage seven. This stage starts in the village of Hartshorne, but since on my previous walk I had already done part of this stage, the section from Hartshorne to Smisby, that was where I started. Smisby had been my starting point on my previous walk, but while on that occasion I had headed east out of the village towards Ashby, now I headed west past the village lockup and the church where daffodils lined the road and provided me with a lovely spring start to the walk even though grey clouds lay overhead threatening bad weather.

The National Forest Way leaves Smisby on a quiet road west out of the village and soon swings south passing the Bluebell Arboretum & Nursery on the right and Annwell Wood on the left. It doesn’t stop at either, though I found it very tempting to do so, but instead I followed the road over the Ashby Bypass to the junction with the Ashby Road where the Tap House Bar, Restaurant & Brewery, is on the corner. Once again, I didn’t stop, but turned right and took a footpath on the left that led me into a field that was covered in large tracts of small blue flowers, probably field-speedwells. A small copse further on was an added delight for me with lesser celandines beginning to appear on the boggy floor of the small wood. So far this stage of the trail had provided me with many spring delights, but as I made my way into the village of Blackfordby the weather deteriorated and it was soon pouring with rain.

Daffodils were out in abundance in the village, especially near the church at the northern end, but by the time I reached the southern end of the village my waterproofs were on and I was keeping my head down as I made my way past Boothorpe and along Gorse Lane past the new plantations on Hanging Hill until I reached a road on the outskirts of Conkers Discovery Centre. Stage seven of the National Forest Way stays on the road to bypass the Discovery Centre and eventually turns off the road through the decorative gates to enter Sarah’s Wood and finally end in the car park for the Conkers Waterside Centre. Since I had never been to Conkers before I headed into the Discovery Centre, but was thwarted by an admission price that I felt wasn’t worth my paying, so instead I followed a path under a railway line to the Waterside Centre.

I don’t know why, but there I found an open gate into the small woodland behind the Waterside Centre where I had a pleasant, little walk in this area that until relatively recently was a deep coal mine. I may have been fed up with the poor weather, or I simply wanted to explore, but I spent quite some time around Conkers even though I never paid to go in, and it wasn’t until after lunch that I eventually did leave the centre on the Ashby Woulds Heritage Trail. I didn’t spent a lot of time on the National Forest Way on this walk, and it had not been particularly enjoyable, but now as the weather improved I resolved to make something of this walk. The Ashby Woulds Heritage Trail soon joins the route of the disused Ashby and Nuneaton Joint Railway which provided me with an easy walk south passing through the delightful Donisthorpe Woodland Park that has been built on the site of the former Donisthorpe Colliery.

I eventually left the course of the old railway to enter the village of Oakthorpe and beyond that into Willesley Wood, which is quite an extensive wood with many paths through a mix of new and established woodland. With a great deal of guesswork I eventually found myself on the far side of the wood where on the other side of the road is an ancient wood whose floor was covered in many wildflowers. Unfortunately this dense wood has no public access and was nowhere near where I’d intended on emerging from Willesley Wood. Despite longing to explore this ancient wood I plunged once more back into Willesley Wood eventually finding my way to the Oakthorpe Colliery Picnic Site where I found my intended route north onto a track that took me into Hick’s Lodge, a former coal mine that is in the process of being totally transformed into a woodland adventure park.

At one time this area was full of coal mines, but they have now all closed and the National Forest has been built in their place to make the most of the derelict ground left behind. Hick’s Lodge is an extensive site that will eventually be an amazing place to visit, but probably needs a couple more decades of growth before it can become really great, which could be said of the whole of the National Forest. Joining the route of the Ivanhoe Way I headed through more young woodland and through arable fields to eventually reach the edge of Ashby-de-la-Zouch. As I headed into the centre of this delightful market town I reflected that this is the third time I had entered Ashby over the last couple of months and even though the walks had not always been great the town has always welcomed me. My entry into Conkers on this walk was under a veil of rain, which dampened my mood, but the weather improved later in the day along with the walk. This walk was in an area of Leicestershire that I hadn’t previously walked, but where I now feel a desire to return.