Foremark to Repton

Date: 6 February 2011

Area: South of Derby, N E of Burton on Trent

Distance: 9 Miles 14.5 k

Start Location: Foremark Reservoir Car Park

OS Sheet: Explorer 245

Grid Ref: SK 3359 2419

Route

These notes are provided to enable the walk to be plotted on a 1 : 25,000 map. They are not walking instructions.


From the car park head north to the road, turn left to bridleway on right, uphill to meet bridleway from Ticknall, left to the Saw Mill at Milton. At road head north, taking footpath into Repton, at road go right to end, left downhill following the road left up to roundabout.

Turning left, take road south to last house, take path on left follow path right and south along the valley, then up track past Loscoe and Fairview Farms to Bondwood Farm, take footpath left down to the reservoir. Using the permissive paths, head north back to the car park.

Journey

The area south of the River Trent, west of East Midlands Airport, east of the A38 is very pleasant walking country. It’s mainly farmland and can get a bit sticky in wet weather, there’s good chunks of woodland, several lakes, well three, all artificial but lovely. Melbourne, Repton, Breedon on the Hill and Ticknall are its main towns and villages. It has its share of stately homes, churches and other antiquities Calke Abbey, Staunton Harold Hall, Melbourne Hall, Repton, Swarkstone Bridge, Breedon and others. It is an area that has been shaped by old industries that are long gone now, however, surprising glimpses still appear when you least expect it.

We’ve done dozens of walks around the area from short ones up to an 18 miler, most of them have gone through near to Foremark and Repton. Fortunately Repton has a special draw, the very good Repton Tea Room on Brook End. It’s open on Saturdays and Sundays and can be found on the right next to a small river between ‘follow road left’, and, ‘up to roundabout’. See  TeaRoom  for details.

For a couple of months now getting out for a proper walk has been fraught with difficulties but Sunday was officially our first proper walk of the year. Even then it nearly didn’t happen due to last minute faffs and indecisions, only overcome by the offer of a roast dinner at Repton. Followed by hurried throwing of things in to the rucksack, plotting a route, printing a 1:50k map and down loading geocaches.


From the forecast we knew the day was going to be windy, but pulling into the car park and seeing the height of the white topped waves on the reservoir was a bit of a shock. Trying to get the car doors open was a real battle. Despite this once we got into the walk we realised that the day was relatively warm and occasionally, when out of the wind, pleasant. On the way down to Milton the Derbyshire Hills were visible beyond the cooling towers of Willington power station.

As we passed by the cottages at the Saw Mill we spotted our first Snowdrops of the year, quickly followed by some Crocuses and a tree, possibly Hazel, full of Catkins, three sure signs
that spring is not too far away.

Repton was very quiet and we were able to get a table in the tea rooms. Once our glasses de-misted and we could see the menu boards we ordered two roast beef dinners, followed by sticky toffee pudding for me and a marmalade bread and butter pudding for Mrs O-n-G plus a pot of tea each, for under £24. It was a very good meal.

Instead for following the plan to take the road south from the roundabout we walked westward a further 100 metres or so, on the way passing a sign saying Basil Rathbone (who played Sherlock Holmes) went to school here, and took a footpath left taking us through a series of alleys and back paths, where we nosed at the houses and gardens, eventually coming out on the road. Dropping down the footpath from the road we walked through a bunch of small paddocks with pigs, geese, ducks and hens. It felt as if we had walked into a re-construction of a medieval peasant farm.

Along the valley and up the track to Bondwood Farm the wind was right in our face which was tiring and unfortunately brought on Mrs O-G’s asthma, not too badly this time, but even a mild attack is not easy for her.

From the track above Bondwood, the footpath passes through several horse paddocks and drops down through woodland down to the reservoir. On the way down we found the first of three geocaches hidden in a bit of a bog, later we found two more (geocaches not bogs). We’re still novices at geocaching, but using my GPS this time I was able to navigate to within about a metre of the caches which is about 10m closer than the iphone got me previously. We were both well chuffed with finding them, it brought a bit of excitement, a buzz, to the walk. I had planned to pick two more up in the first part of the walk, but forgot!

While walking along the side of the reservoir and later while sitting in the car drinking coffee we could not help seeing the wide sandy orange band around the lake dividing the water from the trees. We’ve all heard that water levels were low due to low rainfall this winter, here was proof, the water level was down some 8 to 10 metres.