The West Warwickshire
walking club have picked out circular walks that start at each of the minor
stations between Stratford and Worcester.
Some of them, such as The Lakes, are request stops. The walks are seven
or eight miles long with options to take shorter versions. It’s good that they have based them on
stations as it encourages people to take public transport rather than their
cars.
The walks take in a lot of
unclassified county roads as well as general footpaths through woods and farmland
so they are nicely varied. We are moored
near the path of the Wilmcote and Aston Cantlow walk so we took that one on
Saturday.
We were locking up the
boat when we saw our first Orange Tip butterfly of the year fly by – a lovely
freshly emerged male. This was two weeks
earlier than last year. I always say these butterflies are my real
harbingers of spring so, even though we will probably still get frosts, as far
as I’m concerned spring is here.
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A field of rape in early
bloom outside Aston Cantlow – the first we have seen this year
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The fields we crossed to
get to Wilmcote were full of ewes and lambs which kept Buddy interested for
quite a while. The lambs seemed to vary
quite dramatically in age as it seemed some were only a day or so old and
others several weeks.
The escarpments in this
area were quarried for their limestone which is why there were so many cart tracks
which are now unclassified county roads.
We approached Aston
Cantlow through the churchyard; the church is where William Shakespeare’s
parents were married.
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Aston Cantlow church
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Most of the walks have a
pub on the route and this was no exception. As we were only a mile or so from home we
popped into the Kings Head for a refreshing pint.
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Buddy making the most of
the cold stone floor in the pub
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Setting out after our
drink we saw a sole swallow on a telegraph wire. I took a couple of pictures and also put one
up on FaceBook as I was so pleased to see an early spring arrival. It wasn’t until we go back later that I
noticed it was out of focus.
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At least you can tell it
was a swallow from the shape
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We fell in love with a hamlet
we went through called Newnham; it had a handful of houses and was ½ mile down at
the end of a no through road. It
obviously used to have roads to Aston Cantlow and Wilmcote because we followed
these on the walk.
During the day we saw six
Orange Tips, two Commas, three Small Tortoiseshells and eight Brimstones,
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