Month: June 2026

RP378 – Gravel Hill, 1.6 km (1 mile) ENE of Swinford, Leicestershire.

On By JonathanLeave a comment
The summit of the hill, a shallow, barely discernable rise, is at the far end of the visible track in the photo. The precise top is difficult to determine, but I made it to be at grid reference SP 58530 80348, 133.7m (439 feet) above sea level. Visited 31 May 2026.

The track – a ‘permissive path’ – running half-a-kilometre to the summit from the minor road to the south-east. This is a very open, quiet, and well-tended rural area. Gravel Hill is part of the Stanford Hall estate, a private residence just to the south, which hosts various events throughout the year and is occasionally open to visitors.

RP308 – Bridge 87, Oxford Canal, near Willoughby, Warwickshire.

On By JonathanLeave a comment
From field to the south.

The top of the bridge and field to the side was easily accessible on this occasion, but they’re technically not public access, the GPS location being the centre of the towpath underneath the bridge, grid reference SP 52893 67788, 97.8m (321 feet) above sea level. Visited 31 May 2026, 1:30 pm.

Looking WNW from the top of the bridge.

Plate on the external face of the bridge, NW side.

RP306 – Lot Brook Footbridge, Southam, Warwickshire.

On By JonathanLeave a comment
Lot Brook footbridge from the south. Grid reference (centre of the footbridge) SP 41259 59476, 84m (275 feet) above sea level. Visited 30 May 2026, 11:25 am.

A two-thirds-of-a-mile walk across the fields from Ladbrook church. Would have been half-a-mile but the public path was buried under a tall crop, necessitating walking around the edge of a 25 acre field. Beautifully warm, sunny day, last day of the recent heatwave. Had the pleasure of coming across a Roe Deer on the way.

Lot Brook itself.

The rather faded label at the top of the post refers to the Blue Lias Rings, a series of walks around Southam – 65 miles of paths – set up some years ago. I can find no current reference to the walks on the current Southam Town Council web site, so they appear to have been decomissioned as an actively-managed entity. PDFs of the routes have been preserved at archive.org. I’ve created a set of GPX files here as well as a PDF of the full “Blue Lias Rings Working Party” 2005 publication here. The latter is copyrighted, but as it appears to be out of print and unavailable online, I thought it would be nice to preserve a copy. Note that the south-western part of the area has now been sliced through by HS2, so some of the route descriptions are no longer valid or followable.
The Blue Lias Rings and HS2.