A New Year's walk

From Walks

In recent year's we've started the New Year with a walk to blow away the cobwebs. 2012 was, to put it mildly, wet. In England we experienced the wettest year on record. Our local weather station in Pershore recorded  841.09mm of precipitation in 2012 compared with the aveage value of 606.4mm based on the previous 30 years.

New Year's day was forecast to be dry and bright but the ground was saturated, the River Avon was back within its banks but, as seen from our photos, the River Severn had not yet peaked. With this in mind the route chosen was one that minimised the chance of ploughing our way through lots of mud.

View Bredon Hill from Bredon's Norton 2013-01 in a larger map

Walking on hills rather that lowland seemed like the best way to avoid saturated/muddy ground so we settled on walking on Bredon Hill, a large neaby hill with lots of public footpaths over and around. Our start point was Bredon's Norton, a small village on the western slope of the hill. We parked near the church and then headed up the lane that leads to Woollas Hall. The next leg of the walk up through some ancient grassland to the ridge is much wetter and very slippery. We are not the only people out for a walk on this beautiful New Year's day and most head north for the tower, Parsons' Folly. We instead head south along The Warren with a pretty dry path before heading back down the hill through Aldwick Wood and Norton Park. The lower slopes were again very wet and slippery and one of our party lost her footing and got plastered with mud! Oh well, better to happen near the end of the walk. We looked in at Bredon's Norton, Chapel of Ease before returning to the car.

The walk was only about 4½miles but with the wet conditions it took just over 2hours. A nice refreshing start to 2013.

gps track as GPX