Heart of England Way - Part 5 - Henley-in-Arden to Bidford

The weather forecast predicted it would stop raining early morning and fair play to them, they were right; just as I arrived in Henley in Arden it seemed to stop.  Whilst I'm on the subject of judging things here's my marks for Henley: ten out of ten for having a public convenience and a good coffee shop, zero out of ten for signposting the way to the station.  Never mind, found it eventually, donned my wet weather gear and set off south.



The path supposedly went through the middle of this lake. 

It was pretty quiet on the path today, certainly away from the villages.  The streams and rivers were high but not quite breaking their banks.  Some of the fields however were sodden with plenty of water running off them.

This area was once covered by the Forest of Arden and one man, the late Felix Dennis, business entrepreneur, publisher and tree lover has been tried his best to recreate the forest and has bequeathed much of his fortune to do so:  Felix Dennis Heart of England Forest Project . Felix Dennis is also famed for being jailed in the 1970s as part of the Oz magazine obscenity trial.

The first place I came across Dennis's work was Bannam's Wood where I also almost stood on an infant muntjac deer who seemed to be wet and miserable.

Poor little fellow

Not a tree but a bench donated by Felix Dennis in Brannam's Wood.  It would indeed have been nice to rest here on a dry day but it was one of those days today where you need to keep moving, but thanks anyway Felix.

Alcester was two thirds of the way along today's walk and therefore ideally placed for a coffee stop.  It's quite a sizable town with a mix of old and modern housing, a church in the centre with a coffee shop next to it. 

Good coffee and eccles cake.  Hope I didn't scare them too much by being so muddy.



The old streets of Alcester

There was plenty of geocaching to be had today, particularly at the southern end of the walk.  In fact I had to stop caching eventually for fear of not making it to Bidford before it got dark.  I found 22 caches all together, many of them as part of a Delta68's power trail in the area.    There were even a couple of trig points but I'd already visited those previously ten years ago.




Of all the trees I saw today, and there were a lot of them, this one in Alcester seemed to typify the season of autumn best.

Just south of Alcester I took a short diversion off the Heart of England Way onto the Arden Way and then up Oversley Woods. Why?  Because it's a TuMP, a hill with a thirty meter promontory i.e. a drop of 30 meters between it and the next TuMP.   There were four of these on or near my route today adding a mile or two to the original 14 miles.

A well decorated shed in a caravan park through which the HoEW passes..

South of Oversley the scenery seemed to change.  Arable farming was replaced by numerous horse paddocks.  In fact I began to feel like a horse after a while given the number of stiles I had to jump over.  The villages are becoming quite posh.  I even bumped into Nigel Havers.  OK, it may not have been him but it didn't half look like him.


The Fish Inn with an umbrella entrance porch - no, I don't know why either.
 

The clouds lifted for the last hour of my walk giving some welcome late afternoon sunshine.

I'll end the blog with a rant concerning the pricing policies used by bus and train companies. There didn't seem to be a direct link between Bidford and Henley, certainly not on a Sunday, so my route took me by bus into Stratford and then train back to Henley.  The empty bus arrived dead on time and for the relatively short hop into Stratford I was charged £4.15.  The driver said the standard fare was £4.70 but he could sell me a cheaper daytripper ticket.  There was me expecting something round the £2 mark.  When I called up the bus company on Monday I was told that actually the daytripper was £7 and they don't know where the driver got the £4.15 price from. Never mind I said, I've two buses to catch on the next leg of the Heart of England Way so I'll get a daytripper ticket then.  That won't help I was told, the buses are operated by two different companies.

The train journey was longer and cheaper but the pricing policy still annoyed me. A single ticket  was £3.70, whilst the day return was £3.60  (yes, I did buy the return ticket).  As the train was 30mins late due to signalling problems I started to read the posters.  One described railcards for the young, the old, the disabled, the family, for groups and for people travelling in pairs.  It seems nobody likes the single traveller going one way. OK, rant over.