A Woodland walk

A Woodland Walk

Another Saturday morning, another walk in the woods, I parked the van up in a layby near to the woods and along a busy A Road, I then went through the outer hedges of the woodland and started my ramble through the woodland, it is quite a thick woodland but has lots of paths and has lots of visitors too, this would make it very difficult to find a suitable location to put up a tent or tarp for the night, it would be possible, but with a high risk of being noticed.

I had a good look around the woods and finally settled in an area to make a nice cup of coffee, even this was difficult without people passing by.

The woodland has a great history and was once an iron ore quarry.

The woodland forms part of a village called Irchester and has a large country park which is managed by Northamptonshire County Council, which was created after local open-cast ironstone quarries were allowed to revert to the wild, having been worked out some decades after the war.

The removal of the ironstone and some limestone that overlaid it has lowered the land around the working face by several metres, though this is not apparent except near the vehicle entrance. The park has an unusual ridge-and-furrow topography with several metres' relief, marking the movement patterns of the machines that stripped the overburden to expose the ironstone. The park offers maturing woodlands (planted about 1965) and grassy meadows with surrounding trails. There is also a children's play area and a café.

Irchester Narrow Gauge Railway Museum in the country park shows working steam and diesel locomotives among more than 40 items of rolling stock. A 250-metre demonstration track can be seen.

Since November 2019, Irchester Country Park has hosted a free, weekly parkrun timed 5-km run/walk.