As a dark day dawned it was time for your roving news hound to rove somemore in his quest to go "Round Leicester". I was thinking of nipping off to see Dicky III first, bones mmmmm. But given that I am only just off my own death bed I decided to give that a miss. Boy have I been ill, not that you would know it from the photo below, but I thought I would let you know that I have been unwell. Last time I'll mention it...cough, cough, cough.
I have absolutely no idea what Gillian (centre) is doing in this picture, but as you can see we are all present and correct and wrapped up against the elements, except for your humble reporter who was shivering so much that the OWP had to bump up the speed of the photo to make sure I wasn't just a blur.
Anyway you are welcome to Bagworth, and as a reminder of the industrial heritage around these parts:
And so off we went. Firstly past Holy Rood Church in Bagworth, which is a little different from the majority of village churches in Leicestershire.
This new church was built in the 1960's, but, with falling attendances it's future is now in doubt.
Going out of the village we crossed the first ploughed field of the whole walk so far. Thankfully the ground was quite dry - hardly any mud at all :(
And from there into the National Forest, which, to be fair, is slightly more forest-like here than it has been on previous walks.
John takes the instructions to a whole new level when we cross the line. Although it does not say anything, I'm pretty sure you should do the "stop, look, listen" bit before you get onto the lines, not while you are standing on them.
We also tried to persuade Gillian to let us tie her to the tracks, but with no luck. And we had brought rope and chain with us just for a good photo - ah well...
As we ventured on the traffic noise increased and we knew we were getting closer to the M1, crossing over a stile gave us our first view of it since walk 5 on the 24th June.
Once under the tunnel we were back on "our" side of Leicestershire with its rolling hills, sunshine everyday and fair maidens pulling pints with a smile. And so with that thought we set off for Markfield....
Here I am keen as mustard to get to Markfield - am I allowed to say I was disappointed when I got there?
Oh, and it would be nice to have a rest - cough, cough. Pub ahoy...
One thing we all missed at this point was Rob finding a giraffe, but losing a walking pole. I think the giraffe is something to doing with caching, and the walking pole old age.
No pictures of the pub, all I remember was it was pretty cold sitting outside next to the pet graveyard. No idea what to give as a mark for the pub, so lets say five chips out of ten.
And then on we went, through another glorious bit of Leicestershire. Jane was not too keen to have her photo taken here for some reason.
At least by the time we went under the A50 I had my coat on - beautiful, warm as toast.
Except that the humans thought this happy look meant I was too warm, so...
"You can poke it up your rucksack matey...I'm coming no where near you"
I hate him, I really do. I feel like stripping his coat off and saying "there what do you think of that". Cough, cough, cough...
Anyway off we go hurtling towards Newtown Linford and Old John (the tower not the participant).
There looks like there is a divergence of views on which way to go here. If you are following the right path follow Gillian, if on the other hand you are looking for caches follow Rob.
Sometimes you do find odd things out on walks. Rob had already found a giraffe and now a pig - only good for pork scratchings I thought.
Well that is going to be tricky to top really. So let's just say - and then we were in Newtown Linford with their scarecrow festival...
Now I am not implying that there is any relationship between the photo above and scarecrows - I thought I should make that very clear. So having crossed the stile all that was left was to walk down Main Street to the car park and the end of our walk.
It was really a bit too dark and cold [cough,cough,cough...] to qualify for a five muddy paw marks, although it would be a good one to do when there was a bit of sunshine around. Anyway I decide four muddy paws for this bit. There were twelve caches in total dotted along the walk.
So for those who are into the stats side of the game, that was a pathetic 6.48 miles, which brings the total up to 77.04 miles completed.
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: Old John (both of them I guess), Woodhouse Eaves (pub), Swithland Reservoir (named after the infamous garage in Mountsorrel), and Mountsorrel.
