The Lodge Walk

Today we met up with Laura and Laurence at The Lodge Nature Reserve, just outside Sandy, where the RSPB have their headquarters. 

After a cup of coffee we did a 4.2 miles walk around the reserve taking in the Turbine, Old Quarry and Hillfort trails and visiting the gardens of The Lodge. We were last here in February 2023 and it was nice to see it in summer.

This was our route.

Here are some of my pictures.

We visited the shop first.

They have a great range of binoculars for sale.

Off we go.

It was lovely to see the heather out, but a sad reminder that we wont be able to view it out again at Dunwich Heath for at least a couple of years after the wildfire there.

The turbine after which this section of the walk is named.

The lodge is the HQ of the RSPB.

The gardens were mostly desiccated, but the pond was full of life.

This is a strawberry tree. The fruits will turn red in autumn.

This view is towards Biggleswade.

One of the cliffs of the quarry.

There were plenty of steps on our walk - on the Old Quarry walk in particular. According to the access map, we went up or down about 300 steps in total.

Nothing was bathing here!

This is part of the remains of the earthworks of the old hillfort on Galley Hill.

Not a great day for bird-spotting but I did get a photo of this butterfly on the brambles. It is a Speckled Wood.

And here we are back at the information kiosk.

Then it was of the the café for some lunch before heading for home. A lovely 1/2 day visit. Thank-you Laura for suggesting it.

You can download a map of the trails here and see more details of our route here on MapMyWalk or here on OS Maps (or download a GPX file here) and more of my photos here on Flickr.

Another related post you can find on my blog is...

• Visit to The Lodge, Sandy (Feb 2023).