The Leicestershire Round Leg 1 - Shearsby to Saddington

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With a 100-mile circular walk where do you start? Anywhere, I suppose. If (and that's a big if) I'm going to do all of the LR, I could start anywhere. But just stabbing at the map feels less that good for me. I need to impose a certain order on this venture (here's a character trait emerging and I've not yet started).
Something as momentous as the start of a journey, albeit a circular journey, needs more than a random place to begin. After all, if the distant possibility of me actually completing this journey actually happens, then the place I start will be the place I stop. This demands more than an anonymous stile or a car park. This demands a pub.

Scanning the map last night, I chose Shearsby to Saddington for the first leg. It's conveniently close to home, about fifteen minutes by car). It's flat enough not to have my chest heaving or for me to need defibrillation at the end. It's about three miles in length. All very sensible and hopefully not too taxing. The 1:25,000 OS map shows that both villages have pubs. It looks like a promising start.

I realised that I had unconsciously made another very important decision. Without a moment of calculation, I had settled on an anti-clockwise tour of Leicestershire. This was a decision that needed to be reviewed. I sat and pondered but could think of no good reason not to go anti-clockwise. After all, I expect to be walking the LR twice, so will be travelling in both directions. I asked myself if I'd feel more comfortable in the other direction. No, I don't think so. Okay then.

I woke late this morning, much later than usual. Must be the jet-lag again, I'm all over the place at the moment. I put on a tee-shirt, then wondered if it was the best apparel for the job in hand. I was hardly going to cross a desert, but today is predicted to be the hottest of the year so far. I looked at the material label: 90% cotton, 10% polyester. Was that good or bad? I think I remember that natural fibres are the coolest. Would that 10% polyester be my undoing? I had visions of collapsing after half a mile, clothes sodden with sweat, a martyr to man-mad fabrics.

So I picked up a short-sleeved cotton shirt, with a proper collar. This, I thought, would go with the unashamed image of a novice hiker. Not aiming for cool or chic, determinedly practical, this is who I am.

I packed my rucksack with water, one 500ml and one 385ml. Onto this I added my camera, phone, sun hat (sensibly broad-rimmed). I popped into the local chemist and bought a fresh bottle of Factor 20 sunscreen (sensible again) and into Sainsbury's for some more bottles and a snack. They had a special offer on Lucozade Sport (two six-packs for £5 and a free drinking bottle). I wondered if these my make me look to keen, but decided that I couldn't resist a bargain. I picked up a bag of nuts and raisins to keep me going.

All this faffing around meant that I arrived in Shearsby at 12.45. I parked at the Chandler's Arms, which I discovered wouldn't be open until 7pm. (Make a mental note for the final glorious entry to Shearsby at the end of the walk - don't do it on a Monday!)

Off I set, through Shearsby's deserted streets, then up and across the main road, the A5199 Welford Road. The A5199 used to be a major trunk road, the A51 (I think) but these days it sees far less traffic. It's still in good nick though and I remembered enjoying a few blasts down here on my motorbike. Now I'm crossing it on foot, a good twenty times slower.

My first animal encounter of the day lay across the road. The path took me into a stables. I made sure the gate was shut behind me and then turned into the path of a big brown horse. It looked bemused. I wondered if I'd taken a wrong turn, checked the map and decided that this was going to be something to expect in hunting country.
Fifty metres later, I encountered another obstacle. This time a plasticised woven tape across the narrow strip of field through which the path ran. I know that these apparently plastic tapes are often weaved with a metal strip, which is electrified. I suppose the broad white tape is more visible than a thin bare wire. Was it live? I gingerly flicked it with my hand. Feeling nothing, I lifted it with my map and slipped under.

There were plenty of horses in the fields that followed. I noticed how much manure lay on the short grass and wondered why horses don't get ill. I'm sure that if I pooed on my dining table, I'd go down with a nasty bug sooner or later. Horses are built differently it seems.

In a short while I met a field of sheep. I noticed one with curly horns, presumably a ram (or do I recall that some sheep have horns too). I really am an urban person. To my pleasure rather than relief, the sheep/ram knew that I was a mean man who mustn't be messed with and they scampered away. This isn't what the young bullocks did in the next field.

I've heard that bullocks are curious of strangers but also quite jumpy. So it seemed today. I passed through several fields of them on my journey, getting braver each time. I skirted them at a courteous distance, and was especially careful to avoid cows with very small calves. The parent cows seemed very relaxed about me but the bullocks were more interested. They nervously shuffled as I approached, glared at me as I passed and then started following me briefly.

Cows don't terrify me. But I have something of a phobia about bulls. You don't read about gorings in the Leicester Mercury but I'm sure they happen. I've heard that bulls can have fierce tempers and that a wise walker may choose to turn back rather than enter a field with an angry bull. I glance at the hedges every now and then and wondered if I had the strength and speed to outpace a charging bull before launching myself into the next field. I rather thought that the bull would launch me.

I developed a shrewd tactic each time I climbed a stile. I looked around the next field, especially in the shady corners that I am learning that cows prefer on scorching days like this. If it's a bull-free zone, in I go. If it isn't... well, I haven't worked out what I'll do.

The fields were a mixture of pasture, rough land and stubble. I past a field on the way out that had been recently harvested. By the time I came back on the homeward stretch of the journey, a farm worker was bailing the straw with a machine that scooped up the straw and periodically ejected it in huge circular bails. Impressive to watch.

I check bearings with my compass. There was really no need, as the path is well sign-posted. But this would test my map-reading skills. Actually, I have no difficulty interpreting a map. But I did struggle to start with with the compass. After a few miscalculations, I got it sorted and by the end of the day I was reliably plotting a course from the map and setting a bearing on a distant landmark.

The map didn't show the new houses on the edge of Fleckney. The LR here takes a 90 degree turn right across a rough field. No one would have known if I had skipped across the diagonal for a short cut instead of making the correct turn. But I would have known that I had departed from the official route of the LR on the first day.

By the time I got to Saddington I was well into my stride. As the footpath crossed a road, the sign pointed clearly up a track. It didn't really surprise me that the path should go through a yard, it was similar to the stables at the start of the walk. There was a large van, with decals proclaiming it to belong to The Hogg Boss, a hogroaster. Further on I saw a man washing a large barbecue-type apparatus - presumably in which the weekend's hogs had beeen cooked. Another man, at work in a shed, also saw me. Neither smiled or acknowledged me.

10 metres further along the path I met another man, much older, so slim his trousers relied on braces. "Are you visiting?", he asked.
"No, I'm just walking the path."
"Through here?"
"Yes, it shows a path on this map. Look."
"Can't see. I haven't got my glasses."
He wasn't hostile, or even unfriendly. But he was concerned that I was in the wrong place. I was convinced that I hadn't strayed off the marked path, but thought I should return his courtesy with a polite, "I'm sorry, have I gone wrong?"
"I'll show you the path." he said. "If you keep on this track you'll end up in the old man's kitchen."
He took me back, almost to the place where I entered the property and showed me some small pathmarkers on the edge of the fence. The path entered where I had walked, but quickly changed direction and ran between the Hogg Boss's property and some back gardens.

I apologised again, thanked him for his help and entered the narrow path through the kissing gate. Immediately a fierce dog leapt from the Hogg Boss's place, through a gap in the fence and onto the path in front of me. I stumbled back through the kissing gate and held it closed against me. I wasn't sure that the dog could have pulled the gate towards him in order to reach me, but it was clear I was his target.
Now the hog-roaster-washer spoke. "Come here!" the dog responded and withdrew. "He's embarrassed now."

I thanked him and without being entirely sure that the dog had left the path, I ventured in through the gate again. Thankfully, there was no sign of the dog anymore. Within a few metres the old man had appeared again, this time at a gate into the end of his back garden. We talked a while, about the numbers of walkers who take a wrong turn at the path, and about his garden. "Funny weather. The peas are cooking in their pods.", he told me.

I think he'd have like to talk for a long while but I was really feeling the heat. "I need some shade." I said, feeling rather feeble. We said goodbye and I strolled into Saddington, where I quickly discovered The Queens Head.

Was it open, or was it closed like the Chandlers Arms in Shearsby? The windows upstairs were open. But that was just the landlord's accomodation. I noticed tables and chairs outside but no-one sitting at them. I suppose that wasn't a clear sign one way or the other. Then as I approached I saw that a downstairs window was open. Yes! A sign at the door promised that I had reached an award-winning pub: "Best Pub Food in Leicestershire". I remembered to take off my hat and tried hard to look casual and like a long-time walker as I stepped into the cool interior. I ordered a pint of Everards Tiger and a turkey baguette. In the end I ate outside. And I ordered a second pint too.

The walk back to Shearsby was uneventful. I wondered if I would find it boring to be going over the same ground twice but it was more relaxing, less uncertain and time passed more quickly. Perhaps it was confidence derived from beer.