Well, the anticipated walk to Sallow Coppice was better than expected.
The sun shone and Dillie is now curled up asleep, probably dreaming of squirrels. We saw plenty of them but they don’t play fair and go to the tops of the trees.
As we entered the wood there were big leafy patches of ransoms.
Sallow Coppice was starry with wood anemones, clumps of yellow primroses and the bluebells were a little further on with blue flower spikes dotted around the woods.
Bright yellow celandine could be seen everywhere. If we had ventured down the northern side of the woods we would possible have seen wood sorrel too.
We could hear chiff chaffs and great tits and teens were busying themselves, flying into brash where they like building their nests. There were other birds calling but I couldn’t separate the calls.
Dillie was fixated on the tops of trees watching for squirrels of which there were plenty to keep her interested, as well as lots of sniffs at ground level.
Crossing from Sallow Coppice to Stokewood we saw lambs and their dams, not quite at the gamboling stage. We had a view of Brown Clee down Corvedale as we had climbed up from Craven Arms.
Circling round the edge of Stokewood before we entered it we had beautiful views to the west.
There were buzzards circling overhead, mewling to each other. I spotted a Tree Creeper on a fallen trunk busy finding food.
We joined a Holloway as we climbed up to the Aldon, Rowton road at View Edge. How many journeys had been made along it, had it been used as a drovers route?
We walked along the road down to the next entrance into Stokewood known as Church Lane which linked Aldon with Stokesay. Again a Holloway but not as deep as the one at the other end of Stokewood.
As we came out of the wood with Stokesay below we could see The car park below busy with cars visiting the Castle.
Passing the old mill pond we saw a coote but also eight Canada geese, were they stopping off before flying off else where.
We ended our walk at the Discovery Centre. We covered about Five miles, probably a little more.
We could have stopped for coffee at Stokesay Castle Tea Rooms or the Discovery Centre.
We had set off with the intention of only walking to Sallow Coppice then decided a longer walk was what was needed.
The image in the header of this blog post is cropped from a photograph by Simone Mascellari on Unsplash and is used under the Unsplash licence.
