Stanton Grundle Walk

 

"Shall we go for a walk?", asked Dawn. It was still pretty murky but  the weather forecast was good. I had a little think about where to go. I had been planning on leading a walk for Joyce's walking group based on my previous Stanton Walk and Two Windmills Walk, but there won't be any group walks for the next few weeks. But I could still do it in a 1:1 walk, if it wasn't to slippery underfoot. So I thought we could do a short version of it and check whether The Grundle would be too muddy. So we drove to Stanton Village Hall and set off at about 11:30 and started by heading towards the top of The Grundle.

This was our route.

Here are some of my photos.

There were "Road closed" signs along the road into the village centre when we arrived. It was Remembrance Sunday and it had been closed for the Stanton Act of Remembrance, that had just finished as we arrived. We liked the gian poppy teardrop by the war memorial.

Off The Street we followthe dead-end road sign to the start of The Grundle. "...a deep and mysterious half-mile long trackway, linked in language to the Anglo-Saxon lairs of monsters, demons and man-eating beasts". Read more about it here. It is in fact a dry stream bed that was formed by glacial melt-water.

After a short while, there is a path that goes up the side and goes along the top of the trackway. I took the high raid and Dawn took the low road.

The banks are quite steep, rising to 5.5m in places. Dawn reported that the low road was pretty dry and firm.

Eventually we emerged blinking into the full sunlight.

Here we tried a path that hadn't featured on previous walks, Packlose Lane. Very pleasant.

It joins up with Posters Lane, which I had been on before.

If any one wants some sloes, they are very plentiful.

We passed the Vajrasana Retreat Centre. I don't suppose group retreats are happening at the moment, even thought the sign says they are.

We took a detour to the tree with the lovely apples I found last time, but it was bare. We turned back twards Stanton on another leafy lane that then opened out to a field-edge path.

At the ene we turned right up towards Sid's Piece, which we walked around

At the far corner, we came across a couple of woodpeckers.

We passed Stanton Mill on our way back...

...and the war memorial, festooned in poppy decorations.

When we got back to the car park, we had a bit of a surprise at what we saw on the telegraph wire just by the car...

A budgie! We wondered if it had escaped from one of the nearby houses.

Well that was a lovely walk of just under 5 miles and hardly any slippery bits. Who would like to come and walk the longer version with me over the next few weeks?

You can see more details of our route here on MapMyWalk and more of my photos here on Flickr.