Hello and welcome back to my blog 😊.

Today myself and Mick completed our leg 8 of the Leicestershire Round, walking 9.5 miles from Bruntingthorpe to Frolesworth.

After enduring the horrendous rush hour traffic around Leicester we eventually positioned our cars at the start and end of the walk and set off from Bruntingthorpe, across green fields, towards Peatling Magna. It was a beautiful sunny morning.

We soon eased into relax mode as we enjoyed the easy walking. After a couple of miles across the fields we arrived at Peatling Magna- a quiet little village.

Passing through, we headed towards Willoughby Waterleys, again, across nice grassed fields.

We were starting to notice that there were stiles to be crossed between fields – more than we had met previously on the walk. As we arrived into Willoughby Waterleys we stopped at a bench, in the shade of the churchyard, for a break and to take on water. It was going to be a hot day!

Mick spotted a couple of unusual metal headstones in the cemetery – we had not come across ones like that before.

Walking into the village we passed a pub called ‘George Elliott’. It looked closed and I wondered about its name. So, I checked when I got home. Apparently, it never opened after the Covid pandemic. The pub was named after George Augustus Elliott (1717 to 1790) who was the victorious Governor of Gibraltar during the Great Siege 1779-1783. There are a number of pubs across the country which honour his name – as I found when I googled it!

Leaving Willoughby Waterleys we set off towards Dunton Bassett. As we came to a gate exiting a field we found that a car had crashed into it and mangled it badly. The car must have been travelling too fast and missed the bend. We just about squeezed through.

Our route took us through private fishing lakes (Holy Farm Fishery) – the owners had kindly trimmed the path for us. The lakes were lined with Anglers.

We encountered more stiles on the way to cross over the M1 which wasn’t as noisy as I had expected. Time to apply sunscreen.

We arrived into Dunton Bassett and made for a bench in front of the distinctive village hall. Deep gulps of water were taken on board.

Our next port of call would be the village of Leire. We walked past yellow oil seed rape fields and then past a lake / stream which led to Stemborough Mill – a lovely old building.

The stiles were coming thick and fast now. We reckon that by the end of the walk we had climbed over 30 stiles.

Our path took us through an oil seed rape field. We emerged covered in yellow pollen from the flowers, so at the next field, we skirted around the edges.

Soon, we were arriving into Frolesworth.

We had past through numerous field containing cows and generally they ignored us. Some curious bullocks came over one time to say hello.

It had been a lovely easy walk and the weather was a big bonus. But, oh those stiles! I wonder what the next leg will hold.

Happy Walking! 😊🚶