Greetham to Sewstern and return

It was a bank holiday weekend, and we wanted a reasonably serious walk in preparation for returning to the Wessex Ridgeway in just over a week (though the Viking Way is poor preparation for the Wessex Ridgeway's hills!), We left home around 7.30am and were walking before 9am. Parking in Greetham is not straightforward; we actually parked on the verge just outside the village (at SK922143) but we later discovered a car park at the Community Centre (at SK927148). It was cool to start with, but turned into a glorious spring day; we had spring flowers and verdant foliage for company along with lots of bird-song, including our first cuckoo of spring for 2014.

We turned off Greetham's busy Main Street onto Great Lane, which took us out of the village past the Community Centre. I had expected rather a lot of road walking today, so it was a very pleasant surprise to spot a gate across the road ahead of us; it appears that the lane was a rat run so they closed it. It is still tarmacked, but was wonderfully quiet, with just a couple of dog-walkers for company and views back to Greetham Church. We soon walked off Ordnance Survey Explorer Sheet 234 and onto Sheet 247.

We crossed a road and took a track opposite, then turned left and overtook another dog-walker. Across another road we reached a bright yellow - and smelly - field of oil-seed rape. We were joined by the route of the Rutland Round and together we skirted around the Cottesmere Airfield, formally RAF Cottesmere but now the army's Kendrew Barracks.

We reached the delightful little village of Thistleton, with a pretty church that was rather difficult to photograph because of the surrounding greenery. Then the road walking was unavoidable; around a mile along Fosse Lane, passing the Cribbs Meadow Nature Reserve and leaving Rutland - though we had some difficulty working out which county we had entered.

Still on a road, we turned left towards Wymondham (but not the Wymondham we know in Norfolk) then turned right towards Crown Point Farm (home of “Blue Point Horses”). Just past the farm, we were 'smoked' by burning straw, and we found a sign which told us we were in Leicestershire.

The track wound its way across a gently undulating landscape, with evidence of 'the bedstead men' in places. We passed a mother and young daughter out riding, with either the little girl's pony or its rider being rather uncertain about passing either a large puddle or these two strange middle-aged walkers. Then we reached what at first appeared to be a pink-flowered crop of some sort - it turned out to be red campion; most odd to have such a concentrated and isolated bank of one wildflower.

We emerged onto a tarmacked lane and turned right to Sewstern, passing fields of sheep and an attractive little Church. We did a circuit around the village, passing the road junction from which we will take Timber Hill on our next leg and the Blue Dog pub (later we drove past the Blue Cow Pub – it was quite a day for blue animals!), then we sat on the grass verge for an early lunch.

We retraced our steps to Greetham, stopping to admire the cowslips at the Cribbs Meadow Nature Reserve and being passed by a steam wagon as we walked along Fosse Lane.