Walk 4 Gumley to Peatling Magna

4th June 2012

"The Sun has got his hat on..."

Well not quite, but after yesterday with torrential rain and high winds (and the central heating having to be put on) it is certainly a better day today.

So here we all are ready for our 9 mile ramble past four pubs and possibly some scenery.

Straight off the observant will notice that we are one down for this walk.  Jane obviously over did it yesterday while watching the boats go down the Thames, put it down to a combination of boredom and gin and move on...

As it is the Jubilee no doubt we will be mired up in festivities all the way through the walk, possibly beer festivals and parties, so hopefully it will be best foot forward and we can get past the double temptations of cake and beer quickly.

 Tug O'War, Glooston

So off we go into Glooston for the start of the walk and already we seem to have come across Glooston's Jubilee celebrations.  Bit early for beer guys...

Glooston Church

Past the beautiful church in Glooston and up the first of not many hills towards Saddington.  After the sun of the past couple of weeks and the watering they had yesterday the hedgerows were in full colour and the buttercups were out in their thousands

Arty photo almost of a hedge

Thousands of buttercups (almost)

Here we are on the footpath just before Smeeton Goorse.  Not much mud but after the last walk maybe that is a blessing, so five muddy paws for this bit.  No caches on the walk so far though.  Kerchung...

Saddington Reservoir

After Smeeton Gorse the footpath rises up about the only hill on the walk (despite the fact that the gps devices were telling us there was a mountain to climb).  As we climb up we get a view of Saddington reservoir and then around a huge field with a little brick building in the middle of it.

 Huge field

Impossible to walk past an interesting tree

From here the path decends down over Saddington Brook and the gently up towards the village of Saddington. 

Ask not who the finger points at ask who is doing the pointing and why...kerching

Saddington cows and Saddington brook

With sheep and horses in the fields up to Saddington it was all very pastoral in an English Summer kind of way.

The photographer can never walk past a lamb either

Proof that I am on the walk although I have had to
get close control of John at this point

Not a soul to be seen in Saddington though, so no beer and cake.  There was however the first cache of the day, so that takes the cache register to one (+ two done before the walk).

 Into the wonderland of Saddington

Celebration

As we go through Saddington, we go past tractor that should have been orange but was actually blue leading to an initial mis-identification 

Tractor without a colour

and out into the fields towards Fleckney and the second cache.  While that was hunted for I took the opportunity to pose for a couple of photographs

Towards Fleckney

Towards the camera

and then we were on our way with three muddy paws and the cache register standing at two + two.  Across a series of flat fields and onto the very edge of Fleckney before turning left and heading of towards Shearsby.  

Curious and

Pretty flat landscape here only punctuated by the odd cow 

 Curiouser

and buzzards fighting or mating (depending on what your view of the situation was).  The flat landscape really did not lend itself to much more than tramping through it

Flatlands

with the humans being set on the idea of a beer and me set on the idea of getting a bit of shut-eye.

Traditional beer picture

Of course what they did not know at this point was that there was a beer festival on it Shearsby.  I prepared for what I thought might be a very long wait by falling asleep, but just as I was dreaming of chasing pheasants I was rudely awoken and we were on our way again.  The humans judged this beer and sandwich stop as better than the one at Foxton and gave it a rating of eight chips so that's thumbs up to The Chandlers Arms.

Stuff growing in Shearsby

And then the walk got very cachey indeed.  Let's just say the cache register at the end stood at seventeen + two and leave it at that!

Anyway on our way to Bruntingthorpe there were many cache locations, too many to list!

 John off the leash

The route from Shearsby to Bruntingthorpe paases through several fields before running straight along a path into the village.  All along this bit there were caches at about every 250m.

Ev looking for a cache

DNF

Stanley and the mouse

A picture that shows the point at which I find a (dead) mouse in a rape field, and also rediscover the delights of chasing pheasants and partridges.  One mouse and four birds was the final count.

Poppy near a cache

Bugs but no bunny

The long way home

As we head towards Bruntingthorpe we get another view of where we need to go.  On the horizon is Bradgate Park which is part of walk number 10 and is about 35 miles further on in our walk.

In Bruntingthorpe you could hear but not see the Jubilee celebrations.  We were very kindly asked if we would like to stop and join in, but time was pressing and the pub at Peatling Magna was calling, so on we went.

John offers a helping hand

The stiles were getting higher and higher the nearer we got to Peatling Magna, so high that those of us with shorter legs really began to struggle [Note it was on this walk that Stanley finally cracked stiles and was through then without a wimper].

On the charge to Peatling Manga

And then with one final leap we were on the road to Peatling Manga, stopping for (for us) one final cache before we crossed the finishing line.

Rob crosses the finishing line

And that was almost that, except for Rob stretching his legs even more to go back to Shearsby collecting another fifteen caches on the way with Ev chasing after him in the car. [Edit - and I quote "Missed one or two but then a lot of muggles walking the path with flowers in their hair. Some hippy fest or jubilee beating of the boundaries. Had another pint when I got back and headed home." Almost sounds like fun doesn't it?]  The rest of us decided to sit in the sun for a while before meandering home.  Overall a five muddy paws walk I think.

Download the GPS file here (click on actions - export. Please use a virus checker).

Coming next time: a mad dash across the M1, six pubs, a village without a pub, an odd triangular shaped lake and much much more.

c. Stanley The Dog, June 2012