Marston Trussell, Sibbertoft, East Farndon - circular

Mon, 2013 Dec 9 9:27 AM GMT

Led by me, with Barry and Gordon. Muddy in places, and a couple of short steep sections. Fine weather, not too cold. 9 miles.

A fine morning.  We set off from Marston Trussell church, and follow the road through the village, keeping straight ahead on the minor road, when the main road bends to the left.

This leads us past the splendid Marston Trussell Hall, with its magnificent trees - including a couple of tall redwoods.   The Lake lies to our left some distance away.

We follow the road for about a mile to a T-junction.  On the far side of the road lies Hothorpe Hall.   We turn left and in a short half mile take a bridleway which goes off to our right, at the point where the road has a right-angled bend to the left.  This is easy to flow along the field boundaries, eventually going uphill between two spinneys - Barn-Hill Spinney on our right and Coombe-Hill Spinney on our left.

 A few pauses to admire the scenery are in order!  The gate is close to the left hand woodland.  From here we follow the bridle way along - it heads south, then turns right and left again, bringing us into Sibbertoft by the Roserie. 

A few yards along the road our path turns off to the left. It's marked "Jurassic Way".  It takes us through a field just north of the houses and emerges in the churchyard.  We chat with a man who has lived here all his life, and was at one time an engineer in Harborough. He's a one-time rambler, too and has a few words to say about rights of way.

We turn left from the church, and walk along the road until we find our footpath. Here we have a few muddy stiles to deal with, and a large field with no clear route on the ground. Luckily we know exactly where to go, and find our route with no trouble.

Downhill through the woods - Mount Pleasant and The Lawn, according to the map. This section is drier than last time I walked it. 

We continue following the Jurassic Way, cross Dick's Hill (so the map says), and begin the cross fields section to East Farndon. Sunshine and reasonable conditions on the ground encourage us to have our break. Sibbertoft was too soon, East Farndon a little too far.
There's another steep hill before we cross the disused pits just as we arrive at Farndon. We take advantage of the seat near the church for another short rest.  

Then, it's downhill through the village, and a left turn towards Marston Trussell.  Another left turn, and we're on the home stretch.  Our path goes off to the right, opposite another Jurassic Way sign - there are rather a lot around this village.  We leave them here and take the path - which leads over the muddiest terrain we've seen today. We walk along the lower slopes of a hill - the woodland on top of it is to our left. After a couple of fields we meet a bridleway and turn left, away from Harborough, towards Marston.  Another left turn - no chance of mistaking the way here.  There are plenty of "Private" and "Strictly Private" signs.  The bridleway leads us back to the minor road, and we follow it for a few hundred yards.

The path, off to the right takes us over a large field to a footbridge. Aiming slightly to the right of Marston Trussell church gives us our direction. 

Finally over the footbridge, we can see a gate slightly to our left, leading us back to the churchyard. The ground here is very bumpy - according to the map there was once a moat.

Map and details