Packington / Normanton

• Walked: 23 April 2010
  
• Distance: 5.5m
• Terrain: flattish
• Summary: Park in packington, cross fields to Sprng Lane and continue straight along track. Take the muddy bridleway to Normanton le Heath, and take paths which run parallel to the road back to Packington.
• Time: 2 hrs

The weather's been so nice recently, so the muddy bridleway wasn't. A beautiful afternoon, with lots of signs of spring around; various shades of green in the trees and hedges, blackthorn flowers, dandelions in full flower, elder starting to come into leaf, lambs in the fields.








The route above was generated using Meander.

Image produced from the Ordnance Survey Get-a-map service. Map image reproduced with kind permission of Ordnance Survey and Ordnance Survey of Northern Ireland.

Eerie silence

the reason that this little chap has a puzzled look on his face is that it's unusually quiet. Eerily quiet.
We're beside East Midlands airport, and the reason for this silence is that somewhere up there is a cloud of volcanic dust from a volcano far away with an unpronounceable name. It stopped the aeroplanes from flying yesterday and again today. It looks like continuing into the weekend. The walk around the perimeter of the airport is pleasant enough, but I wouldn't normally do it because of the constant stream of aircraft going to and fro. But today they're all sat on the ground going nowhere. :-)On the way round, I went out of my way to visit the memorial plaque to the people who died, were injured or helped in January 1989 when a plane crashed on the M1 motorway below.

It has turned into an extraordinarily nice day today.
Some kind of fungus? Or something alien? Not sure what this is.
I do know that this is hawthorn - the leaves are unfurling now turning the hedges a beautiful bright green.
And these are the flowers of its sister, blackthorn, the flowers generally come out earlier than the leaves. And eventually turn into sloes, which make gin into a gorgeous liqueur.

Albert Village circular walk

Distance: 5m
Walked: 28 March 2010

My first tentative steps into the sunshine after a long hibernation were to explore some paths around Albert Village on the South Derbyshire / North-West Leicestershire border. A short 5m walk was just enough to get the legs working again.

After a very long cold winter and a long wait for the daffs to come out, I managed to spot several very early signs of spring. some trees as well as the hawthorne were coming into bud, and a few of those buds were starting to unfurl. Fluffy catkins were showing on willow trees.

Extra year-round colour on this walk is provided by gorse.

The National Forest is a Forest in the Making. This walk takes in some well-established as well as some newly-planted woods, and has some beautiful views over the lake at Albert Village.

On the second loop of this walk, to the east of the lake, a viewpoint gives you a great view over the lake and surrounding woods.