| The Warwickshire Centenary Way | |
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Prerambling ....
I got up and peered out of the bedroom window with very little optimism. It wasn’t raining, which felt like a technicality rather than a promise as the sky had that heavy, settled look of something merely gathering its thoughts. Sure enough, as I stepped out and headed for Dave’s house, the rain began—not as a polite drizzle or a tentative overture, but with immediate conviction. It had clearly been waiting.
This was, of course, the first day of a carefully planned eight-stage walk across the Midlands: roughly one hundred miles of countryside, canals, modest hills, and a generous scattering of history.
The Centenary Way, devised to mark one hundred years of Warwickshire County Council, loops in a broad arc around Coventry before dipping south toward the Cotswolds. Quite who was in charge of Warwickshire for the preceding thirteen centuries is less clear, though I suspected the answer would not be revealed by trudging damply across its fields.
Warwickshire had once been my home county, before administrative boundaries shifted and I was quietly annexed by the West Midlands. This, I decided, was reason enough to walk it end to end.
Today, on this inaugural stage, it also had appalling weather.
Kingsbury Watery Park ....
My companion for the day was my old friend and oft-time walking buddy Dave Somen—known to the wider world as @Lenscap— who greeted the conditions with the sort of stoic resignation usually reserved for dental work but was also determined to tackle the hike. We set off in convoy, Dave leading with the authority of a man in possession of sat-nav, and promptly conducted an exploratory tour of Chelmsley Wood and Kingshurst before returning, with quiet inevitability, to his own front door.
Walking Boots, it transpired, are not optional.
This small delay proved oddly beneficial, as by the time we dropped Dave’s car at Hartshill Hayes Country Park and reached Kingsbury Water Park the rain had eased itself into a brief pause. We seized the opportunity to tog up and set off, buoyed by the faint hope that the worst might have passed. However the skies remained a flat battleship grey and before we had completed the first mile it was pelting down again
The first few miles took us in a lazy circuit through the water park, which was largely unnecessary, but the designers of the Centenary Way obviously wanted to show off the best of the park to its pilgrims.
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Dave at Kingsbury Water Park |
On this particular Wednesday morning, it was empty.
The lakes lay flat and grey under the low sky, their edges blurred by rain. Even the most committed fishermen had evidently drawn a line.
We threaded our way through this subdued landscape and eventually slipped out to follow the River Tame which moved along with deceptive calm. I have seen it in less accommodating moods, when it swells and spreads until the entire park becomes an extension of itself.
A complex series of drainage channels have been installed at Kingsbury Water Park over recent years which have worked a small miracle (considering the deluge that 2012 has unleashed) by keeping the park open.
Today the river behaved impeccably, as if keen to demonstrate that not everything in Warwickshire was intent on drowning us.
"Birmingham and the parishes in the centre and north of the modern conurbation were probably colonised by the Tomsaete or Tomsæte ("Tame-dwellers"), an Anglian tribe living in the valley of the Tame and around Tamworth during the Kingdom of Mercia. They migrated up the valleys of the Trent and Tame from the Humber Estuary and later formed Mercia.
The Tame rises in Oldbury before flowing northwards through Stafford to join the Trent and finally the North Sea via the Humber Estuary. It once had the dubious distinction of being one of the most polluted rivers in England, poisoned largely by effluent from the industries of Birmingham. Thankfully the levels of pollution have dropped dramatically since the seventies and the lakes at Kingsbury and Lea Marston further serve to filter out contaminates. The result of this being that wildlife is returning again to its banks." - Wikipedia
Whitacre Heath - twice ....
Leaving the river behind, we struck out across open meadows, the grass slick underfoot, the conversation drifting comfortably between the trivial and the profound. We were corralled into a narrow track, fenced off from the large but unseen Lea Marston reservoir, and when we emerged back out into more open ground onto the Birmingham Road, we found that the rain had eased off , prompting us to shed waterproofs with some enthusiasm.
Two hundred yards later we were putting them back on again.
The first of the day’s villages, Whitacre Heath, hove into view. This was one of the three ‘Whitacres’ in the area – Whitacre Heath, Nether Whitacre and Over Whitacre - and historically the youngest, being of Victorian vintage.
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The River Tame |
Something was amiss.
Closer inspection revealed the problem: the guidebook contained both northbound and southbound directions on the same page, distinguished only by discreet little letters that I had entirely failed to notice. We had followed one, then the other, and effectively undone our own progress. It was just good fortune, and some easy to follow way-markers, that had prevented this happening earlier.
I apologised to Dave with what I hoped was sufficient sincerity.
The resulting detour—perhaps two miles—was not in itself significant, but it acquired a certain weight when combined with persistent rain and a growing sense of dampness in certain places one usually prefers to keep dry. It was a minor irritation, but not the last of the day.
We set off again, this time reading the book properly.
A break for lunch ....
The path led us past a field of Alpacas —an unexpected but agreeable audience—before rejoining more familiar ground along a local route called the Foul End walk.
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The mysterious Colin Teall sign |
[MW: May 2016 update: An enigma resolved. At last I know the answer to this as I just received the following Tweet from Oliver Teal - "@DarkFarmOwl to solve your Colin Teall woods mystery he was my grandfather and willed the woods to the council in 1996." Thank you Oliver, and thank you also Colin Teal for your donation of this quiet and charming piece of Warwickshire countryside.]
We crossed the railway again followed by a couple of meadows. Dave made polite noises about a lunch break and I agreed that we would stop in the village of Shustoke, which was just around the corner.
Shustoke is a small village, no more than a couple of reservoirs (another favourite haunt of mine), some houses, and a pub. It has a long history, being already established by the time of the Norman conquests and it’s pleasant enough to look at but, as we discovered, a useless place in which to eat soggy sandwiches in a monsoon; Shustoke doesn’t do all-weather seating.
So lunch was taken instead in a narrow lane beside the reservoir, where we found partial shelter under a tree and assessed the situation.
We were, by mutual agreement, sodden.
Waterproofs had surrendered. Trousers clung with determination. Dave confessed to a developing relationship with trench foot. My own consolation lay in dry feet—briefly—thanks to gaiters and boots that had thus far performed admirably.
I looked south, where the weather was coming from, and confidently predicted improvement within the hour.
Dave, wisely, said nothing.
The call of the Griffin ....
For a while, it seemed I might be right. The rain eased, the light shifted, and we walked along the reservoir under skies that hinted at better intentions. Perhaps disturbed by our passing, some two dozen ducks swam away from the shoreline, heading for a convergence in the centre of the lake. I suggested that they were going to have a gang fight to determine the Daddy Duck. Dave suggested that they were gearing up to attack the pair of swans gliding about snobbishly on the opposite side of the lake. We moved on and never saw the conclusion to this little tableau.
The Shustoke reservoir complex has two lakes at 92,000 cubic metres and 1,921,000 cubic metres. They were dug largely by hand, in the late 19th century and now supply water to the populations of nearby Coventry and Nuneaton. The spoil from the digging was used to form the six metre high embankment around the larger lake.
Predictably the rain returned, with renewed enthusiasm. After the lake was left behind we dithered around uncertainly on a confusion of tiny tracks before spotting a concealed Centenary Way marker. This took us along the boundary of a rough pasture that sloped away up to our right. Just over the crest lay the Griffin Inn, one of the finest inns in the area—a place of open fires, good beer, and the sort of steak and ale pie that can derail even the firmest resolve. I felt a distinct pull in that direction, a gravitational tug of comfort and warmth. My feet, however, remained stubbornly aligned with the Centenary Way.
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Shustoke reservoir under the weather |
It was a relief to gain a road once more at the hamlet of Furnace End, - a name referencing the iron smelting furnaces that once operated there. We walked through it, passing a village pub (The Bull Inn) and an abattoir, leaving the place with an unwholesome mixture of coal fires and dead animals that lingered in our nostrils for some time.
[Note: The abbatoir has since closed is is just a small butchers shop which has made the village much more pleasant to walk through.]
Three challenges ....
What followed was a sequence of fields, hedges, and increasingly imaginative obstacles, which I will summarise only briefly to spare you unnecessary repetition. There were ploughed footpaths, thoughtfully erased by a farmer with a clear philosophical objection to walkers. There were brambles and nettles that took a personal interest in our progress. There was a fall—mine—executed with some force and entirely missed by Dave, who was otherwise engaged in not falling over himself.
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Dave, Birchley Heath, and sunshine |
And then there were the cows.
Large, tan, horned, and possessed of a calm that did nothing to reassure. We advanced with studied nonchalance, acutely aware of a single, slender electric fence that offered what might loosely be described as protection. It didn’t look substantial enough to deter the beasts if they decided to take umbrage at our presence and it was a relief to leave that field with dignity intact.
A few minutes later saw us skirting the edge of another large field, this one was freshly ploughed which gave us something different to stare at other than grass. It was definitely getting brighter, and warmer. I suggested a stop to take our waterproofs off again but Dave, perhaps a little weary of leg by now, didn’t want to stop and suggested, half seriously, that I remove it as I walked. This presented an interesting challenge which occupied me for several minutes. It is indeed possible to take off ones rucksack, wriggle out of the waterproof, open the rucksack, stuff the rolled up waterproof inside, close the rucksack, and put rucksack back on again without altering ones stride. It’s possible – but largely pointless. It’ll never make the Olympics.
A break in the weather ....
Suddenly we were in sunshine. This miracle happened as we filed along a narrow tree lined track that snaked its way across several field boundaries. It was a pretty, peaceful little section and I admired the many different hues of the leaves as they filtered the dappled light, casting shifting patterns upon the mossy floor. I stopped and looked skywards.
Dappling?
Sure enough the rain clouds had shuffled away to bother Norfolk and in their place were cheery patches of blue set amidst smoky white clouds and a pale lemon sunlight. For the rest of the walk we basked in gorgeous late afternoon sunshine and perfect skies.
Birchley Heath, appeared ahead, with its red brick terraced cottages all cheerful in the resurgent summer day, as if rain was nothing but folklore. Gratefully we rested a while on a bench in the paddock and I promised Dave that it wasn’t much further (a claim of dubious accuracy), and then we pressed on.
We moved quickly through the village and out the other side, meeting fields of golden wheat, and the odd rabbit. I was a little ahead and was about to go through a kissing gate when Dave called me.
“I tell you what – I’ll just stay right here. It’s nice!"
I back-tracked around the corner of a hedge to find him lying flat on his back in a little patch of muddy grass where he had slipped and fallen without ceremony and apparently noiselessly. Like my earlier fall, this would have gone unnoticed had he not pointed it out.
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Oldbury picnic meadows |
“Nearly there now mate.” I said to Dave, this time with more conviction.
Inevitably over such a lengthy walk, people lapse into a pace that suits them most. I found myself walking some way ahead of Dave for the final stages and it’s fair to say that we were both starting to flag a little.
We turned off the lane and plodded along through a series of narrow meadows, where drifts of late summer wild-flowers blossomed, and stands of Rowan and Birch provided some more of that fabulous dappling. It was a dreamy sort of place and we ambled along quite happily until we hit a locked gate and a dead end. We had missed a turn somewhere. Dave wasn’t the happiest I had ever seen him when I explained this to him but we tried our best to figure out a short cut to take us to the days end. It was getting late, we had walked a long way, and neither of us were all that fussed about back-tracking to try and find out where we had gone wrong.
We were on the edge of woodland that would take us uphill to where a busy road could be heard, so we took a track up through the woods and came out on a road that seemed familiar. We opted to turn right along the road and then right again along a second road on which we were both fairly sure we would reach Hartshill Hayes Country Park.
It's the last mile that does for you ....
The final stretch of road walking was a lot longer than we imagined and I kept seeing road signs far ahead of me, using them as focal points, convinced that the next one would read ‘Hartshill Hayes Country Park’ and being continually disappointed. I think I passed four such signs before a sinking feeling of déjà vu grew on me. Ahead were a little line of cottages and … a bridge with its span missing.
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Hartshill Hayes Country Park |
So in the end we missed the last few miles of the official route, hiking instead up the lane, around several corners, passing gates to several rather grand properties, and finally, reaching the entrance to Hartshill Hayes Country Park and the sanctuary of Dave’s car.
“The country park, covering 137 acres of woodland and open hilltop has magnificent views across the Anker Valley. Opened by Warwickshire County Council with assistance from the Countryside Agency in 1978, the species rich woodlands have been traditionally managed which has led to the site receiving the Forestry Authority’s ‘centre of excellence’ award.” - Wikipedia
I’m afraid that all we saw of the place was a toilet block and a car park. Had we continued a short half mile along the main path we would have enjoyed the some magnificent views, but we had just walked almost twenty miles and continuing anywhere but into the car was not an option.
My guide book is a dead book ....
We had walked close to twenty miles, extended the route in creative ways, and endured a full day of weather that could politely be described as invigorating but I had started the Centenary Way at last. Dave drove us back in a state of quiet exhaustion, assuring me—between yawns—that he had enjoyed it. I believe him.
The following day I transcribed the relevant sections of the guidebook into a more durable format. The original, now swollen, warped, and faintly aromatic, has retired from active service.
I think it’s a safe bet to say that it won’t be of any further use.
See Route on ......
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