Footsteps

LETJOG PEAK No 45: Bardon Hill, Leicestershire (278 metres)

Walk Date: Wednesday 23 August 2023

Young tree-growth in the National Forest

Today’s walk proved to be one of contrasts: town and country, quarry and forest, activity and stillness, noise and silence. Coalville is an unusual town insofar as its existence is quite recent – a product of the Industrial Revolution. The name reveals the town’s heritage as a coal-mining centre, and the settlement only really developed from the start of the 19th Century, with the majority of the centre’s brick-built houses dating from Victorian and Edwardian times. Coalville has a current population of nearing 40,000 folk and mining is still important, although nowadays the industry employs far fewer souls and the quarrying is exclusively for construction aggregates and for granite. Against all of this development the area also sits within the footprint of The National Forest, around 200 square miles of the Midlands landscape once scarred by coal mining, that was identified in 1995 as an innovative large-scale environmental project. The vision here is to reinstate the area’s lost native deciduous woodlands and thereby link with the existing ancient forests of Charnwood on the higher ground to the north-east of Coalville, and Needwood further north-west in Staffordshire. The result of these two vastly different but inter-twined drives, towards urbanisation and reforestation, is a landscape which is a cocktail of heavy industry and mining alternating with rolling farmland and swathes of serene forest. There is an awful lot here to take in, and to try to capture ‘on film’, all within the confines of a single day’s walk!

This 14-mile circuit starts and ends in the Leicestershire town of Coalville, proceeding anti-clockwise, first southward to the village of Bagworth, then turning east and northwards through Stanton under Bardon, ahead of the climb to the County Top of Bardon Hill and a westward turn back to the start-point in Coalville

After a pleasant evening staying over in Northamptonshire with Rick and Eleanor, my friends from yesterday’s hike in Rutland, a later start was in order this morning. As it happens this arrangement worked very well, as by the time I got to Coalville to start my walk at the late hour of eleven the early rain and murk had cleared to reveal sunny skies. Alone on the trail once more, I covered the first few miles fairly quickly, but I confess to some fatigue as the afternoon heat set in on my way to the County Top at Bardon Hill. Hopefully my pictures capture a flavour of my varied walk today.

My circuit started in the late morning at the Belvoir Centre in Coalville

Walking south out of the town centre I passed numerous brick-built Victorian terraces, that continued all the way through the suburb of Hugglescote

After a mile or two I left the town behind, along this green track . . .

. . . soon joining a section of the National Forest Way long-distance footpath . . .

. . . along some delightful woodland paths, where the young deciduous trees allow plenty of sunlight through (at least for the moment)!

Out into farmland, and to the north a first peek through the trees at Bardon Hill (but with a few more miles to cover before I attempt to scale it’s heights)

Wheat to the left of me, maize-fields to my right, here I am, stuck in the middle!

Back into the plantation, through Battram Wood, where the trees planted by the National Forest include native hardwoods such as ash, beech, lime, alder, cherry, sweet chestnut and hazel, interspersed with a few conifers such as Corsican pine, Douglas fir and European larch . . .

Floral colours in Bagworth village . . .

. . . and has August ever been so green?

Time for some to have an afternoon snooze . . .

. . . whilst for me the track led on, towards the village of Stanton under Bardon . . .

. . . where I took a lunch break looking back down on the start of my ascent of the County Top

Bardon Hill is flanked by two large quarries, largely hidden from view behind trees and the security fences, but on the southern slope the path crosses these conveyors from the granite workings near Brook Farm . . .

Nearing the top of Bardon Hill, around the 250-metre contour, there are some small clearings with heather and other moorland plants; the hill is home (apparently) to around 200 species of spider, including small colonies of the very rare Charnwood Spider

On the top of Bardon Hill, the County Top of Leicestershire at 278 metres of elevation; and with a prominence of 170 metres the peak has some impressive views . . .

. . . that extend to the south-west over the industrial parks of Ellistown, all the way to the West Midlands . . .

. . . and westwards over the Bardon Hill Quarry that dominates that flank of the mount

On the path down from Bardon Hill the serenity of this scene was disturbed by the constant sound of heavy plant and the haulage of aggregates in the quarry below to my left

Back into the trees, with miners’ trophies by the wayside, on the track down off the hill . . .

. . . before returning to Coalville, where this statue commemorates the town’s heritage

I spoke above about contrasts, and these will be my abiding memories of today’s walk. I applaud the vision of those at the National Forest and their skill in managing the execution of their plan, that now boasts over 8.5 million trees planted since the project’s inception. Nearly 20 years ago, as part of some work that I was doing for The Parks Trust in Milton Keynes, I had some meetings with the National Forest management team, in order to share experiences on what was then their infant venture, and it is exciting to see how their work has materialised a couple of decades on. Whilst perhaps a little under the radar, the transformation of parts of these former coal-mining areas is stunning. I have certainly enjoyed leaving my own footsteps on this part of our fine country today!

There are a number of these benches around Coalville, with plaques in remembrance of ‘those who have died since March 2020 from Covid-19 or other causes’; the first such memorials that I have seen on my travels

My Blog heading today ‘Footsteps’ is taken from a song of the same title released by Leicester-based rock band Showaddywaddy from their 1981 album ‘Good Times’. The group, who made their breakthrough via the TV series ‘New Faces’ in 1973, specialise in revivals of numbers from the 1950s and early 1960s: these include ‘Footsteps’, a song co-written by the prolific Barry Mann and Hank Hunter, that was originally released in 1960 by the US singer and actor Steve Lawrence. A fitting number for any walk, I think!

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