Around Redesmere and Capesthorne
(Mark Thompson)
The following walk is mostly flat, on tracks and grass fields. Allow about 2 hours or more, depending on how slow you are with a camera.
Start on the road at Redesmere parking area and go up the lane with the mere on your left.
Within a quarter mile there is a stile on the left which will take you through a field, parallel to the lake.
Continue to follow the path through past Redesmere sailing club, where you may just be lucky enough to see Bethan falling off her paddle board and wading through the mud.
Continue on until you reach the A34 on a sharp bend about a quarter of a mile South of Capesthorne main entrance. Turn left for about 50 yards and across the road you can go through the gate onto grass fields. Continue along past Capesthorne pool etc and you will come to Mill Lane.
Cross the lane and go over the stile and follow the path through fields until you come into a farmyard, Blake House Farm.
After you’ve gone through the yard turn left along a track past a cottage and keep going along the path and track until you reach the A34 opposite to Siddington Village Hall.
You can go up the drive and round the building and across the lawn to cut out the walk along the narrow footpath on the A34. Toilet in the back of the Village Hall if you’re getting a bit needy by now.
The steps off the lawn take you back onto Redesmere Lane and in a few yards you’re back at starting point.
You’ll just have to hope that the ice cream van is there to end the walk properly.
Around Froghall and Consall, Staffordshire
(Gerald Edwards)
There are a couple of places to park one at the heritage railway station and the other by the marina boat wharf on the Foxt Road. Members will be able to walk as long as they want or are able. The walk across the Canal path will take them past the tunnel underneath the Ipstones Road and site that used to be Thomas Boltons Copper works. Past the copperworks you’ll enter the valley. During this walk the members will have the ability to take images of Barges, landscapes from valley, Industrial through the copperworks and the old Lime kilns by the car park and the Churnet Valley Railway where there’s the station and the steam trains. Also if there’s time and the members are willing to pay, you could visit Kingsley Wildlife Centre which is on the opposite side of the valley and is only a few hundred yards above the Railway Station
Deep Hayes Country Park
(John Stuart)