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#Post#: 7738--------------------------------------------------
Avening Circular Walk
By: Griff Grof Date: June 23, 2014, 5:05 am
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5 miles, 12 caches. Park at N 51° 40.879 W 002° 10.478
Full directions, also found on the cache pages, but compiled
here:
•Start by heading towards the church from the parking area and
go up the narrow path to the right of the churchyard.
•At the top there is the first of many unusual stiles. Follow
the footpath through the gates and bear round to the bottom
corner of the field.
•Go through the kissing gate and follow the stream for a few
yards before you bear left up to the stile in the top corner of
the field.
•Go over the stile leading into the lane and bear right. Now
follow the lane down the hill. You will pass a farm called
Avening Park, on the left. Verges here are covered with
butterbur, which flowers in early spring, with a cluster of pink
heads.
•At the bottom of the hill fork left, signpost says “Restricted
By Way” follow the unofficial footpath sign, marked footpath,
which runs next to the stream.
•On entering the field follow the hedge on the left
•Carry on with the hedge still on your left and go through a
young plantation, the stile is just the other side of a fallen
tree and the footpath is overgrown, to continue up the valley.
•Come out of the plantation and carry on up the valley. The area
around here has many buzzards, so listen out for their high
pitched calls, you may be lucky.
•From this location carry on walking up the valley.
•Carry on from here following the footpath. In the fields on the
left there are two round barrows and also a long barrow. The
long barrow is perhaps 5,000 years old and was quite an
elaborate affair, whereas the round barrows could be anything
between 4,500 and 1,200 years old.
•Continue with the wall on your left until the path comes out
onto a track. This is a public road, but not fit for normal
traffic. Turn right along the track. Within the next 200 yards
the hedge on your left is made up of at least 14 different
plants.
•At the end of this hedge a path cuts across the track, carry
straight on. You will notice that the woods on your right have
private signs on the entrances to it. This section of track can
be muddy.
•When the track goes off to the right and a bridle path comes in
from the left, keep straight ahead following the bridle way to
the wood in front of you. This is Hazel Wood and some hazel
stumps, now overgrown, can be seen. Before the invention of
cardboard boxes all fruit and vegetables were transported in
wicker baskets.
•When you enter the wood bear right alongside the wall, do not
follow the path which drops away in front of you.
•Follow this path until you come to a kissing gate on your
right, go through this and follow the path around the inside of
this wood. This way you will leave a very muddy section of the
bridle way.
•Sadly there is no footpath to cache #10, and you have to follow
the track, lane and then main road to get to it. We had to
resite it after being placed originally as it was too near other
caches in the area. This was the only place that met the
relevant criteria.
•When you reach the main road, turn left. You will have to walk
along the main road to this cache. We had to place this one out
this way so not to imfringe on nearby caches. So please
supervise any young children and please take care when crossing
the road.
[center]~ [/center]
I really enjoyed this series, in one of my favourite corners of
Gloucestershire. Read about my experience of it on my blog, here
HTML http://griffgrof.blogspot.co.uk/2014/06/avening-circular-walk.html<br
/> :)
Will try to put some photos on here, but does anyone know how to
make images smaller with the ParseBBCode forums use? ???
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