Wish You Were Here Too!

Away We Go!

We six stalwart members of NWR are able to report that we have completed Day 1 of our Long Walk, surviving not only rampant nettles, brambles and thistles, but very high humidity and a hot afternoon.

The Way begins on top of Kinver Edge, so our first challenge was to meet up in the chosen car park and get ourselves up onto the Edge. Three of us went to one car park and three to another, but we decided to climb up separately, with our kind chauffeurs.

 After a false start, where we nearly became the women who wanted to walk the Staffordshire Way but couldn't find it, we checked the information board

 and made it to the start of the Way.

Off we went along the Edge

enjoying some lovely wide views.

We descended very steeply into Kinver, more steeply than the devisers of the Way had intended, but picked up the Way again in the village and walked on out into the fields towards Enville. Flowers were a highlight of this day. If only you could smell these!

honeysuckle

We almost felt we could walk along the red poppy road!

We stopped for elevenses just before Enville Hall.

What else would a horse eat but horse chestnuts?

Unfortunately the scoreboard does not show Anne's reports on our progress: distance walked and time taken.

From Enville we walked through farmland by a rather circuitous route to Highgate Common. Fields mean stiles, and alas the first one was a double!

At Mere Hall the map seemed to show the Way leading straight across the water, but we were relieved to find that there was in fact a causeway to take us across.

Again, there were wide views across the fields, and the flowers were delightful.

The woods at Highgate Common were festooned with honeysuckle

but the fresh green undergrowth meant that Sarah was unable to spot the bench Stafford NWR had picnicked on only a few weeks earlier. So we ended up sitting on the grass verge just outside the woods.

Revived by lunch we walked on up the road and along the ridge above Seisdon. The Way skirts the village Seisdon by an enclosed field path, which had become unpleasantly overgrown with things that stung and scratched us. Not a good section of our walk. From Seisdon we walked through the fields, heaving ourselves over a few stiles and catching our feet in the odd burrow before making it to the A454 at Trescott, where a patriotic welcome awaited us.

Tomorrow we return to Trescott, and walk on to Mitton.


Submitted by Sarah