Owner:
squiz
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Member#: 6644 Location: Registered: 27-05-2007 Diary Entries: 3072
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20th June 2017
Hiking - Walking: Rutland Water, Sherwood Forest and Kiveton Commun Wind Direction: Wind Stength: Surf / Sea State: Air Temperature: Sea Temperature: Weather: cloudy and much cooler! Max Speed: Distance Covered:
Monday 19th June – travel, relax and walk **** Rutland Water – sunny
and very hot!
Got up early and fiddled around and did exercises. We went up to town and
loaded the van and talked to the builder next door. Had a bit of lunch
then left around 12.45 to drive up North:) We drove 145 miles to Rutland
Water with the most memorable bit being 3 red kites flying low overhead.
We didn’t think it would be easy to park up here because last time we
parked in the sailing club and knew you had to pay. All the car parks here
are pay and display but we drove onto the Hambleton peninsular and found
the most perfect parking space overlooking the best bit of the lake – it
is really beautiful and the water is like a mirror :) We had to move up
because there was some kind of rubbish dumped in the hedge teeming with
maggots and smelling pretty foul. We took our flask down the lane to the
edge of the water and spent the afternoon reading down there. It is
absolutely stifling hot and it is difficult to know what to do to get any
relief from it! Had our feet in the water quite a bit. Back to the van
for an easy tea of cut up bits and pieces and salad. We went for a walk
down another lane to the water and back to where we were this afternoon
through the sheep field. A few people parked along our lane to enjoy the
warm evening.
Tuesday 20th June – travel and walks **** Rutland Water, Sherwood Forest
and Kiveton Community Woodland – cloudy and much cooler!
Good night in our great spot on the peninsular in the middle of Rutland
Water despite the stifling heat! Woke to a misty/cloudy day and much much
cooler with only the occasional dog walker and mountain biker passing. Nice
relaxing start reading before breakfast. Went for a short walk to the
water, this time starting off to the left and ending up at the spot we
spent a hot relaxing couple of hours yesterday opposite the half-flooded
church. There were several dinghies out enjoying NE breeze including what I
think is a Moth, a small single hand hydro-foil boat who was flying, would
love a foil for my windsurfer but they are so expensive:( Toyed with the
idea of biking around but as we have already done it twice we went in
search of some canals.
We headed to Melton Mowbrey whose market was in full swing, then by-passed
Nottingham before ending up at the Visitor centre in Sherwood Forest but
with a carpark charge of £3 we parked in a lay-by just down the road:)
After a quick sandwich we followed the wide path back towards the centre
which included information, shop, café, video room and a small life like
attraction featuring the many forms of Robin Hood. There were several
marked trails including a Major Oak walk with trees in excess of a 1000
years old!!! The forest is very beautiful full of oaks with a dense bracken
base, several of the trees had metal bands and supports holding them up!
There were loads of information boards up telling of the flora and fauna
and telling about the Robin Hood legend, we only saw one squirrel plus a
few blackbirds. After a couple of hours in the forest we moved onto Worksop
where our newly purchased Inland Waterways Map of Great Britain showed the
Chesterfield Canal with a section with loads of locks and a 3102m tunnel!
It was a surprisingly short distance to Worksop but the canal took some
finding as it was quite narrow with the smallest locks we have ever seen!
We stopped in a large carpark right by the canal and went to get our
bearings, past a fisherman with a long pole but not much fish action, had a
chat to a couple of cyclists before heading off to see if we could find
somewhere quieter to park so we could bike tomorrow. This turned out to be
harder than expected ending up the wrong side of the M1 and couldn’t even
find the tunnel. We then drove back towards Worksop before turning Kiveton
and found a nice large secluded carpark near a fishing lake, just perfect.
Kettle on we had a cuppa but no cake, we had white bread jam sandwiches,
then read, dozed before going for a walk as we were in some sort of park
for walking and biking. We soon discovered we were in Kiveton Community
Woodland made on the site of the old colliery which closed in 1994. They
had made a lovely job too and many people were enjoying the paths, some
hard tracks for bikes and others cut through meadows. A zig zag path lead
to the top of what was the slag heap with top views of the rolling
countryside and included an iron pit pony sculpture. Back past the fishing
lakes to the car park we had a chat with a man releasing his racing pigeons
to fly the 16 miles home :) We saw you could access the canal by a path
opposite our car park but then noticed that the carpark was only open from
dawn to dusk! We decided to sit tight and see what happened. After a nice
Lidl lasagne for tea and while doing todays photos on the computer a nice
young man drives over from the fishing lake, we think he is going to move
us on but he says he is locking the gate but we are fine to stay, result
and safe too:
Photo Gallery
here
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