Walk 10 Newtown Linford to Mountsorrel

Sunday 21st October 2012

Cripes!  It's a bit cold and foggy and me without a coat.  Anyway here we are again Rounding Leicester as Autumn closes in on us.  Not sure it is quite the day for your poorly roving news hound to be out in the cold and damp [cough..cough..cough] but having been forced out of my nice warm bed at a crazy hour on a Sunday here we are.

You will notice that we are one short - Ev decided to stay in bed and keep warm, but the rest of us are ready to go.  This being Bradgate Park there are two OWP in the team today with Jane also carrying her camera.

And heavens above there seems to be an awful lot of people walking the Round Leicester already today.

The park looked as if it was cut in two by the fog, to the right bright blue sky and to the left nothing but fog.

By now we had lost OWP1 who was more interested in photos than walking.

So we left him behind and hoped he would not catch us up.

Which, sadly, in the end he did

Meanwhile we had lost OWP2 who had spotted ruins and was off.

These are the ruins of a Tudor house and was the birthplace of Lady Jane Grey.  For more information on Bradgate Park go here.  Turning round there were deer everywhere.

Soon we were heading off towards Old John and what looked like a blue sky day.

Here we are striding across the moors towards Old John (hidden by cloud or wearing red), Rob meanwhile was in the trees looking for "Oh Dear" (not sure if that is a nice way of saying something else or not...).

The climb up to Old John is possibly the toughest on the whole of the walk (look for an update after Borrough Fort).  91m up to 207m in just about a mile, so not Everest but steep for Leicestershire.

Past expensive sheep and onwards towards the summit.

Here we are taking a bit of a breather near the summit.  It seems Rob has found one cache already.

Straight ahead is our final destination (and only 14 miles away), however we needed to go right from this point.

Not a still from a 80's pop video just Old John.
 
Going down away from Old John your befuddled news hound got even more confused than normal and went off with another group of people, which caused much hilarity and ended up with me being put on a tether.

Sadly after Old John the weather closed in again, the blue sky vanished and we were left with a bleak greyness.  Even so the humans cheered up when they walked past a pub...and after a short debate decided to enter the hallowed portals.

As you can see it would be better to say almost all of them cheered up...the chairs were slightly damp after the fog.

Still we were close to the beach, and although skinny dipping should have been out of the question I still did not have a coat.

Here I am all excited about going on the beach...once again I have fallen for dastardly human humour.

Whilst drinking beer Jane even managed to get this photo of the OWP...

Although there seems to have been a thumb print on the lens, ah well maybe next time :)

After a pint and crisps (humans) or nothing (Stanley) we set off again towards Swithland Reservoir awarding three chips out of ten as we went. It was pretty bleak with almost full cloud cover but at least the ground was not too muddy.

As we walked the sun gradually began to break through again.

And this is the photo looking back to Woodhouse Eaves.

From here we began to get back onto the clay soil that made walking so muddy early on in our walks on the Round Leicester.  Through a maize field we began to slip and slide towards the Great Central railway.

As we got to the railway we heard a whistle and so we waited for a train (sad or what?).

 

I am too young to know what a steam train is, but you would have thought some other people should have known better.

 Eventually the train arrived...

and went again...

 Was it all worth it?  And so that was the end of the excitement and on with the walk.  Next stop - water.

 and near the reservoir another cache.  Here I am doing my best pointer impression, and John and Rob are doing their best "ignore the dog" impression.  Walk on.

Swithland Reservoir itself was as still as a mill pond.

And offered the OWP's another photographic opportunity.  So here we go...

So with that all over it was time for lunch 

 
and a final stroll into Mountsorrel along tarmac roads.

Looking back across Swithland Reservoir from the top of Mountsorrel.
 

A happy band finally arrive at the promised bench (about 2 miles beyond where they were told it was).  After that it was just a short walk back to the car parked in Mountsorrel.

A walk of thirds this one.  The Bradgate part was worthy of five muddy paws; the Woodhouse Eves to Swithland four muddy paws, and the remainder three muddy paws.  So let's say overall four muddy paws for the whole walk.

There were five caches in total dotted along the walk.

So that was 8.54 miles, bringing the total to 85.58 miles walked so far.

For the first time we have a walk profile that is not almost entirely flat.

For the gpx track of this walk go here (to download the gpx click on actions and then download - make sure you run a virus check before using the gpx file as it is held on a public server).

Next time: The A6, Cossington (pub!), A Roman road (the A46), Rearsby (pub) and no doubt lots of mud.

c. Stanley The Dog 2012