Ivanhoe Way Day 3 Worthington to Stanton Under Bardon

Date : 11 September 2011

Area : Leicestershire

Walk : Ivanhoe Way Day 3

Start At : Worthington

End At : Stanton under Bardon

OS Sheet OS Explorer 245

Start Grid :4049 2060

End Grid : 4676 1115

Distance (M/k) :10.2 / 16.3

Ascent (ft) : 1080

Descent (ft) : 725

Route

These notes are provided to enable the walk to be plotted on a 1:25,000 map.

The Ivanhoe Walk is clearly marked on the map

Journey

We originally started out on this final leg of our Ivanhoe Way walk on Saturday 13 August but a couple of miles in a domestic problem brought the walk to a halt a rapid return to the car and a dash home. Thankfully things were soon sorted out but a day was wasted. Since then I have been embroiled in some fairly extensive decorating which has kept us from walking for nearly a month.

The first section from Worthington to Gelsmoor where we bailed out, was pleasant enough through a small housing estate across fields and along their edges until we came out on to the B5324, Rempston Road at Gelsmoor.


We resumed the walk by parking a car in the village of Newbold and wandered around to Rempstone Road passing The Gelsmoor Inn and joining the Ivanhoe Way at the first of the many, many stiles we would cross during the next 8 miles or so.

 In this first field there was a bunch of very curious blonde and red headed young ladies, who crowded us a little more than was pleasant and lead to the first navigational faff of the day, unfortunately not the last. Having sorted our mistake out, we pressed on passed Griffydam, around Peggs Green and across Swannington Moor towards Whitwick.

The land around these villages was for several hundred years the site of a half dozen collieries, plus the railway lines and industries associated with coal mining, we passed the headstocks from one of the pits as we walked. Indeed other than this remnant we saw little indication of the industrial past in the landscape, only fields, trees and hedges.

The numerous small fields, stiles and slightly strange waymarking caused several stops to check or correct minor navigation errors all of which slowed us down and broke up the rhythm of the walk which made this section of the walk less than enjoyable.

In Whitwick we walked down the wonderfully named Dumps Road to The City of Three Waters, which led us to the lovely Cademan Woods from here the walk took us through several housing estates and a stretch of woodland before skirting around Bardon Hill and quarry, across to Rise Rock Farm out onto the A511 and down to the the small car park to the north of Stanton under Bardon.

All in all we found much of this portion of the Ivanhoe Way walk disappointing and unsatisfying, but the dull, windy overcast day did not help. If I were to offer any advice to anyone contemplating walking the Ivanhoe Way, I’d say do it anticlockwise and possibly get the Whitwick, Ashby, Measham part done first.