Hello and welcome back to my blog 😊.

This morning I met up with Mick and we did a walk that we had been trying to do for a few months now. We parked up in the free car park (👍) in East Bridgeford intending to do a 12.5 mile circular walk. It was a hot day and we were looking forward to a good stretch of the legs.

East Bridgeford is a charming little village which I had not been to previously so I was enjoying walking through it. We set off across fields heading towards the river Trent where we would pick up a path that ran adjacent the river.

It wasn’t long before we met the river and a Marina.

Alas, as we turned a corner to follow the path we came up against a path closure.

Now, we had heard that the path had been closed last October following Storm Babet but naively assumed that 6 months was plenty of time for the council to address the issue. Wrong!

We now had to check the map to look at alternative routes. The problem was that we didn’t know how far the path closure extended and we did want to walk by the river. We headed along the road to get back into East Bridgeford and then picked up the road to Kneeton, looking for a path that would take us back to the river.

We found a path and walked down it to find the other end of the path closure, so that was good – we knew we were now clear of the path closure. Dropping down to the river we passed a fallen tree – one of many that we would see.

Pleased that we were now back on track we headed along the river bank path taking in views of the river Trent.

Continuing along the path we found our way blocked by a fallen tree so we had to climb over / limbo under it to get passed. Not impressed.

Carrying on we found the path getting narrower and narrower with the sides full of stinging nettles. Guess who was wearing shorts? Mick was lucky that he was not in shorts.

We pressed on thinking that we would pass through this area shortly. However, the path petered out into an impassable morass of nettles. Eventually, we could go no further.

My legs were tingling from the stings and we now had to go back through the nettles and climb over the fallen tree once more 😒. Things were not going as planned!

Consulting the map once more we looked for an alternative route to take us away from the river and on to Kneeton. Heading up the steep embankment we found a good path with nice views.

We met a friendly dog walker who asked about our route and warned us about paths that may not be accessible. I thought ‘we have had our fair share of those already!’

We had a steady walk along a grassy path, which was still very muddy in places. We were pleased to roll into Kneeton and find a handy bench by the church. We were most definitely ready for a break.

Leaving Kneeton we passed across fields and were heading to the busy A46. The route that we were following took us across the road but this was impossible because access was fenced off. We took a quarter mile walk along a road adjacent to the A46 to cross by a pedestrian bridge.

Crossing the A46 we now had a quarter mile walk in the opposite direction to pick up our planned route!

Crossing fields we passed the architecturally very impressive Flintham Hall. The conservatory at the eastern end of the hall resembles the original Crystal Palace. It is a private house although it does open its doors to the public once a year. http://www.flinthamvillage.org.uk

At this stage we agreed to modify our planned route because of the delays we had suffered. We took to the roads and headed for Screveton passing an unexpected sculpture in a field, although it was looking slightly ragged in places.

Close by, there was a nice memorial to the crews of two RAF aircraft who lost their lives in a mid-air collision above Screveton on April 14th 1944. It never ceases to amaze us how many memorials we come across on our wanderings.

We passed through the quiet village of Screveton and headed for Car Colston, passing a tangled root system on a house wall.

We passed the church in Car Colston and passing the cricket club we watched lawn mowers cutting the grass ready for a game of cricket . Car Colston boasts the largest village green in Nottinghamshire. Following a road aptly named Butt lane we headed back to East Bridgeford and the car park.

The walk hadn’t gone as expected – sometimes these things happen. We had seen some unexpected things (Flintham Hall and the sculpture at Screveton) and had a good stretch (13 miles) of the legs – what’s there to complain about?

Happy Walking! 😊🚶‍♂️