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- Sep 27, 2002
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Well, I started a thread last week, really to show how different hiking is in my area compared to the vast outdoors in North America and other places.
I was quite surprised at the interest though, so I thought I'd post a few pics of my latest hike. I took along my Nikon digital camera, only to find that both sets of batteries seem to have died and failed to charge at all. So it was back to the trusty mobile phone.
This was quite a modest walk really, about 4 1/2 miles in all, starting in the village of Berkswell, over the fields to the village of Meriden and back again via a slightly different route. Part of the walk follows the "Heart of England Way", a long-distance footpath created from existing rights of way.
Berkswell owes it's existence and it's name to this, "Bercul's Well", where water still wells up out of the ground. It provided the village's water supply until modern times.
This is Berkswell's parish church, it is mainly Norman (of around 1100AD) but the remains of an earlier Anglo-Saxon church can be seen in the Crypt.
I left the road for the fields along this track.
The track passes Blind Hall, a house of around 1600AD.
The track peters out here and I went through this kissing gate and turned left along a footpath over the fields. (The kissing gate is new, there was a stile here last time I came this way).
In the past, farmers used to create "dew ponds" in the corners of fields by digging out a bowl-shaped depression and lining it with clay. They were intended for the watering of livestock. They tend to be neglected nowadays, even filled in, in these days of piped water but I passed several on this walk. This one had overflowed onto the path so I had to walk round the opposite side and took this picture from there.
There is another dew pond behind the bushes to the left of this stile.
The path carries on, picks up another farm track and ends up on a road. I crossed the road and went down a short drive which finished at this kissing gate, where the route takes to the fields again.
The public right of war runs diagonally across this field, it is handy when other people have trodden the way before you! The straw must have been here since last summer.
Getting close to Meriden now. Meriden was for many years the home of Triumph Motor Cycles and is the reputed exact centre of England.
Continued in part II
I was quite surprised at the interest though, so I thought I'd post a few pics of my latest hike. I took along my Nikon digital camera, only to find that both sets of batteries seem to have died and failed to charge at all. So it was back to the trusty mobile phone.
This was quite a modest walk really, about 4 1/2 miles in all, starting in the village of Berkswell, over the fields to the village of Meriden and back again via a slightly different route. Part of the walk follows the "Heart of England Way", a long-distance footpath created from existing rights of way.
Berkswell owes it's existence and it's name to this, "Bercul's Well", where water still wells up out of the ground. It provided the village's water supply until modern times.
This is Berkswell's parish church, it is mainly Norman (of around 1100AD) but the remains of an earlier Anglo-Saxon church can be seen in the Crypt.
I left the road for the fields along this track.
The track passes Blind Hall, a house of around 1600AD.
The track peters out here and I went through this kissing gate and turned left along a footpath over the fields. (The kissing gate is new, there was a stile here last time I came this way).
In the past, farmers used to create "dew ponds" in the corners of fields by digging out a bowl-shaped depression and lining it with clay. They were intended for the watering of livestock. They tend to be neglected nowadays, even filled in, in these days of piped water but I passed several on this walk. This one had overflowed onto the path so I had to walk round the opposite side and took this picture from there.
There is another dew pond behind the bushes to the left of this stile.
The path carries on, picks up another farm track and ends up on a road. I crossed the road and went down a short drive which finished at this kissing gate, where the route takes to the fields again.
The public right of war runs diagonally across this field, it is handy when other people have trodden the way before you! The straw must have been here since last summer.
Getting close to Meriden now. Meriden was for many years the home of Triumph Motor Cycles and is the reputed exact centre of England.
Continued in part II
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