Dingoes

The Hamill Birthday Walkers

Back in February I visited the Peak District with a group of friends for the week (for my wonderful fiancee’s birthday) and we took to exploring this lovely national park on foot. Our first walk started at the village of Ipstone and took us on a 5 mile circular route through woodlands, along rivers & streams and along a nice stretch of the local canal.

The walk started of pleasantly, barring a few navigational errors brought about by my compass which had become faulty and was pointing south instead of north. The walk through the forest was fun and we squeezed all 10 of us on a little wooden bridge for a group photo before descending to the canal.

OH NO! The path is closed

While walking along the canal we where disappointed to come across a closure sign indicating we could proceed no further due to a ‘Dangerous Chimney’ and after a short discussion we decided ‘to hell with it’ and proceeded regardless; and with quite a bit of excitement regarding the danger we where to face.

The chimney was not the standard garden variety by any means’;, it was a huge industrial chimney which had once been part of a vast factory that had long been demolished, leaving this unstable towering brick monster. We quickly took a few photos and marched away to safety before anyone noticed us there and found ourselves back at our cars (and the pub) and headed home for some tasty food.

The scary chimney

we managed two more walks later that week which ill talk about in parts 2 and 3

Map of the walk

A mossy wall

Its been a fair few weeks since i did a section of the Cotswold way due to a variety of reasons, not leased that both peter and myself have spent some time on holiday but we finally got round to continuing our walk. The third section of our walk takes us from our last stop in winchcombe onwards to the outskirts of Cheltenham and a small reservoir at a place called Dowdeswell. we arrived at ‘the reservoir pub’ to leave a car and move back to winchcombe to start our journey and i must say winchcombe despite my first impressions is a very nice village indeed and i enjoyed the stroll through the quiet Sunday morning village center at the start of our walk. Today’s walk is the longest we have done so far at just shy of 12miles, and i was concerned that i would not enjoy much of it due to a very tiring week before but i was pleasantly surprised at home much i was enjoying the day, it was a brisk temperature not reaching above 6∘c but the sun did make it out in the afternoon.

Craig Crawling out of Belas Knap

The first interesting landmark we came across was a place called Belas Knap, which is a “neolithic long barrow” or a big stone mound with burial Chambers in it, we had a good laugh exploring the little recesses, 1 of witch was barely big enough to climb into as you can see from the picture. we soon pushed on from here as we had a long way still to go. the country side was very pleasant along the walk with some lovely woods to meander through, we soon found ourselves soon taking lunch on the banks of a disused quarry which is now mostly a golf course and as we made our way round the golf course we where treated to a magnificent view across the county, we could see for miles and miles across the plains of gloucestershire as far as the malvern hills and probably allot further on a clear day. walking along a golf course was a bit odd, the lovely views and easy paths where very welcome, but this ‘tidy countryside’ felt very fake and it was nice to move on to more traditional walking ground.

Lou & peter walking down to the reservoir

Our peaceful walk was abruptly interrupted when we came across a dirt bike field in the middle of our path and we had to walk amongst the scallys, chaves and neds racing around us, but they didn’t cause any issues. Soon after peter found a nice horse for us to touch, we always say ‘its not a proper walk unless you touch a random animal’ and before long we had reached the reservoir and set off home.

Finally i just wanted to make a quick mention of my new ‘platypus’ drinking kit, its a big water bag that you can drink from while you walk via a pipe. i was pleasantly surprised at how easy it was to use and how much i liked it. i will defiantly be using it in the future