Boarsbarrow Hill & Green Lane

[puddleshark]

Boarsbarrow Hill.



From the outskirts of Bradpole, a short stretch of a narrow lane much beloved of cyclists - including the tight lycra and fancy sunshade brigade - and speeding motorists, then a right turn onto the track to Boarsbarrow Farm, and a slow climb up to Boarsbarrow Hill.



Beef cattle landscape. Barns and silage clamps. Striped silage fields newly harrowed and rolled.





But it's not quite as intensively farmed as the countryside I was walking through last week. Not all the hedges have been ripped out. Small copses survive tucked away in odd corners of the landscape. The tracks are lined with banks and hedges, and there are wild flowers on the banks. Small Tortoiseshell butterflies were basking in the sunshine.


Young cattle on Boarsbarrow hill. I plucked a stick from the hedge in case I needed something to wave at them - I have been chased by young cattle many times on these expeditions - but perhaps these cattle were still young enough to be timid. They ignored me.


Onto a path that circles the hilltop woods on Boarsbarrow...


...which gradually closes in to become a secret way, lined with celandines and wild garlic, and blackthorn in blossom.


The first wild garlic flowers.

The path circles Boarsbarrow, and descends, becomes a holloway, sandstone walls laced with tree roots, mined by rabbits.




Small caves in the tree roots. (No sign of Geoffrey Household).


A path that becomes a stream after rain. But we have had a dry March and all the ways are dry. It's just a matter of not falling into the central runnel.

A little further on, there is a choice of paths:


The wet weather path on the left, rising above the mud, and the dry weather path on the right, ploughing on through. Both strangely mud-free for the time of year.


Back down into the village of Loders.