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WarwickshireWalk Details:
The Walk: |
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After the miserable East Anglian tops on our February trip, we decided that we wanted some decent hills in March to make up for them. We therefore headed west to bag ourselves a couple of thousand-footers. Unfortunately, I overslept and Jim had to let himself in, but at least this gave him time to see the weather forecast while I was getting ready. They'd been forecasting clear blue skies all week, but we'd got to the actual day matters were, as usual, rather different. Now we would be getting fog in the morning instead. We decided that on our way to the thousand-footers of Gloucestershire and Worcestershire, we'd stop at Warwickshire. We were less worried about the view from this lower top being obscured by fog, plus it would mean that we could celebrate our landmark 50th top on the supposedly impressive Worcestershire Beacon. The weather was gorgeous as we left Wycombe an hour behind schedule, thanks to my ardent somnambulism. However, as we plunged out of the Chilterns via the impressive M40 cut, we plunged into thick fog. This held all the way across the Cotswolds, with visibility at times of less than one hundred metres. It did not bode well for our planned walks. We had planned to park at one of a couple of public gardens in the village of Hidcote Bartrim. However, the first one turned out to be a busy National Trust property - chaps in yellow jackets ushered us towards a parking space and showed every sign of wanting to usher us through the pay turnstiles too. We felt they would not take kindly to us taking up a valuable parking space and then pulling on hiking boots and heading off for a walk so - much to their astonishment - Jim executed a neat turn and headed back out of the car park. We ended up parking in the nearby village of Hidcote Boyce instead, where there were a few spaces at the roadside bear the village amenities (ie a phone box, noticeboard and a house selling fresh eggs). It was a pretty yet unassuming place, where most of the inhabitants appeared to be out for a morning walk. They all nodded friendly greetings to us in passing.
Rather than clearing as predicted, the fog was distinctly getting thicker. The track emerged into a grassy field and petered out. Normally it would have been easy to spot the way out of the field on the far side, but in the fog with only a pink map to guide us, we had no alternative but to follow the edge of the field until we found the relevant gate. Through the gate was a further field, but one of quite different character. This one was full of little hillocks and craters. One of the nearby hillocks looming out of the fog looked nicely pointy, and we ran up it with whoops of joy (although noticing farm buildings behind it we quietened down a bit!). I don't know why a pointy hill (no matter how small) makes us want to climb it; it's probably some kind of mental defect. From our new vantage point we were in a position to judge that the odd landscape was probably caused by some kind of stone working, probably to obtain the materials for the nearby dry stone walls. The path kept to a "ridge" between these workings and ran around the left hand side of the field - if you follow this route beware - the path is, for some reason, only signposted in the opposite direction, so check the back of fenceposts for path signs. The going was easier now - Ebrington Hill is a bit of a plateau, and having climbed the escarpment we were now walking across the relatively flat summit. The path soon emerged at a junction of minor roads, where we turned left to follow the smallest of these roads to the highest point of the plateau. We were very wary of walking along such a foggy road, and kept nervously turning to check for traffic, but there wasn't any. The county top was shown on the map as being close to yet another radio mast (as so many county tops have been). To our delight though, it turned out not to be the usual mast scarring the top of the hill, but instead a couple of satellite dishes. Well, maybe not delight, but at least it was something different to crown a hill with. The highest point in the county was supposedly in a field on the opposite side of the road to the satellite station. The field was pretty much flat and the site of the highest point probably depended on how much it was ploughed. With our 47th county top bagged, we headed back to the car via a different route, following a track down the side of the satellite station. We briefly diverted along the south side of the station to find the local trig point, which the farmer had innovatively utilised as part of his dry stone wall. Interestingly, other hiking boot imprints lead to the trig point and no further - obviously other county toppers or trig-baggers had been here before us. Jim climbed the trig point (as usual), finding it a very easy one thanks to the adjacent stone wall. The few trees here were stunted and windswept, showing that the top must get pretty rough weather at times. We followed the track back over the escarpment and down to the village of Hidcote Bartrim, where we had earlier scarpered from the National Trust enforcers. We hid our faces from them as we passed the entrance, in case they recognised us and tried to force us to enter. The rest of Hidcote Bartrim looked like a delightful little village, albeit one slightly dominated by the National Trust property. We didn't linger though, for we had more hills to climb! It was now just a short walk back to Hidcote Boyce and Jim's car, on the way crossing a stream and a field where the footpath had been completely ploughed over. Fortunately the soil was dry, so the walking wasn't as hard as it could have been. We tried to follow other people's footprints across the field but they meandered all over the place - the farmer clearly hadn't done himself any favours by destroying the footpath. The fog had now lifted a little and as we entered the village (where I was once again confused by the triangular village green) we were able to look back and get a glimpse of the slopes of Ebrington Hill. They were surprisingly impressive, looking like ramparts reaching up into the mist. It seemed a shame - but for the weather I'm sure we would have had a rather good view from the top.
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I
had left my GPS unit at my parents' house last time we were there, and
thus we were to experience the horror of doing today's tops using low
quality monochrome printouts of OS "pink" maps from www.streetmap.co.uk.
I straight away showed how rusty my mapwork was by leading us down the
wrong road from the tiny triangular village green. The mistake was soon
rectified (Jim had been awake longer and was therefore fortunately more
alert than I), and we headed out of the village on a dirt track that lead
uphill past a farm.