15/5/11 - Kinsgbury - My oldest CW Magazine Walk

Distance - 8 Miles
Caches - 1
Inspired from - CW Magazine April 1991 - Walk 12

Kingsbury Water Park

Sorting out a load of old e-bay purchases and found my oldest copy of Country Walking Magazine, from April 1991.  Cover price of £1.60 with a rather fetcing purple winner in the Cagoule group test on the cover.  In the down your way section, it has a relatively local walk in an area that I have not been to before, so I decide to give it a go this weekend.

As well as the fashions, the modern maps have improved.  This one took a while to decipher and plot, due to its tiny scale.

How down your way used to look

Get up at 7:30am and get ready in walking gear.  Molly spots me and does one, taking to hiding upstairs.  Her fear is getting increasingly irrational and today she is visibly shaking at the thought of what is in store for her today.  She doesn't trust me when I am in walking gear and Sonia is in pyjamas.

Coerce her into the car and 45 minutes later, I am working out that the barriers at the water park don't like fake £1 coins.  I didn't know it was fake until a closer inspection revealed that may not have been the queen.  Get the £3 together from assorted shrapnel to get in.

As the everytrail route shows, water dominates this walk.  Head south on the Centenary Way, working through green paths alongside the lakes.  This gives the doodle plenty of chance to show off her duck hunting skills.

The walking is flat and the Centenary Way is not too well sign posted but doesn't present a problem.  After the quaries around Lea Marston, I come out for a bit of road walking.  This is OK, as there is a path to Whiteacre Heath where I pick up the Heart of England Way.  It smells of cows.

Heart of England Way - No Crops but a strange smell.

The weather men have been lying to me, as I checked this morning and it said wall to wall sunshine, only for it to start raining at this point.  Jacket would have been required.

Its a short jaunt across the field to pick up the Coventry Road for more road walking.  There must have been less traffic in 1991, this is a dangerous nightmare of a walk.  Not helped my a vintage rally going on.  I suppose that if I am going to get taken out, a E Type Jag is a more stylish way of going.  I am a bit concerned, as I have to keep crossing over to avoid being in the road on blind corners.  My fears are grounded as there is a plague on a tree in memory of 5 people who were killed in 2002.  Not the greatest place to be walking.

After half a mile of this, I am relieved to be back on farm land, albeith guarded by horses and their foals.

They're coming to get me!

This brings me back to the water, aiming for the visitors centre in another couple of miles.  At one point the dog goes missing... I turn around and call her name and she appears, prompting a jogger to laughingly tell me that she has been rolling in fox poo.  The seduction techniques of a labradoodle are in vain, as a stick and a handy jetty mean its bath time.

Fetch!

But what about my musky poofume?

After this splash down, we arrive back at the visitors centre.  There is more life here now, including a real life minitature railway.  My usual activity of Geocaching (of which there is only one on this walk), pails into insignfiance in comparison to this hobby, where if you are good, you get to wear a hat.

All Aboard!

Interesting experience - now I'm going to go back to the magazine.... the Craghoppers Highland VTX at £40 won the best Cagoule with not a mention of the word Goretex.