Thursday 2nd July Tingrith Walk led by Tony R

As some of the club were away on the annual UK holiday the chairman decided to offer other members a local walk. 5 members met at Tingrith church. We followed the track north, went through a kissing gate into a field which had recently been cut for hay. We followed the field boundary to enter a field of sheep mainly sheltering from the sun. Then then came to a road which we crossed on to a new footpath which we followed alongside a wheat field. After a while we turned right across a footbridge to enter Basil's Wood, noting the recently installed fence stopping dogs etc from entering an area reserved for ground nesting birds. We continued on until we came to Higher Rads End where we turned left passing some large houses. We left the road to cross another field of hay before passing through a kissing gate onto a farm track. We left this and followed a footpath to rejoin the original path along the wheat field further southwest. Another kissing gate led to Castle Farm Lane  which we followed for a short distance before turning left through a kissing gate into a sheep field with Washer's Wood on our left. Another kissing gate led us into a wood where we stopped for our coffee break. 

Joy, Jean, Debbie & Tony P at our coffee stop

On leaving the wood we entered a field of oilseed rape which we struggled through the first section before walking along the field edge to avoid the worst of the crop. At the field corner we turned right & carried on until the path turned left. After a while we realised that we had missed the stile through the hedge into the adjacent field. As we didn't wish to retrace our steps we carried on passing Herne Green Farm & eventually rejoining or original route. Unfortunately this led through some more oilseed rape crop making walking difficult. After passing Lodge Farm we diced against crossing another field of oilseed rape so we continued along the farm trach to reach Long Lane. Here we turned left & followed the lane until we found a footpath on our right leading to Tingrith. With difficult due to overgrown bushes we reached the famous red telephone box in Tingrith. We the made our way up Church Road the reach our cars. We found the the distance that we had walk was just over 6 miles instead of the palled 5 miles due to missing a stile. 

 

Track of walk, walked in anti-clockwise direction