Martyn's Blog

I’ve been back out and about again after the recent hot weather put a stop to my grand travel plans. Coincidentally, the trip I went on yesterday (Tuesday 9th August) was not the one I had originally planned, because it was too hot to travel by train. It wasn’t too hot for a morning walk to Outwoods Woodland, though. I had originally attempted to do this walk back in March, but there was far too much mud in the fields at the time, and I didn’t bring my wellies with me.

Outwoods Woodland, also known as Anslow Park Woodland, was created when local farmers FG Thompstone gave over some of their land to the National Forest Company to become part of the National Forest, which covers parts of Leicestershire, Derbyshire and Staffordshire. Permissive access is provided by the landowners, which basically means you can walk around it, but not get up to any mischief like fishing, camping or generally making a mess.

The woodland is shaped like a lower-case letter ‘f’, with several entrances and pathways converging in the middle. The entrances/exits which I used on Outwoods Lane are accessed by climbing over a stile. There is a small pond to the north of the woodland, which was looking less than full, seeing as we’re in the middle of a hot spell of weather.

I arrived at the woodland around 8 o’clock in the morning, and there were a few dog walkers out and about. One overenthusiastic dog jumped up at me and left a bit of dog slobber on my t-shirt, but that soon dried off. I left the woodland after a short walk around, and walked back down Field Lane to a public footpath through a field. When I came up this way back in March, I was a little bit apprehensive about walking through someone’s land, even though it was clearly signposted that it was a public footpath. I thought I would be chased by a farmer with a shotgun, but that didn’t happen.

I left the field at the exit close to the new housing estate at the top of Lower Outwoods Road, and then walked back home. It was a good two hour walk in the early morning sunshine, and I definitely want to go back to have a look around the other pathways to see where they lead to.

Thanks very much for reading.