Enjoy the barleyfields at Battlefield Farm, near Park Gate.

Pepper Wood belongs to the Woodland Trust and is managed in the traditional way by local people as a community woodland.

Everybody is welcome to explore it and it makes a great destination for this enjoyable walk from Park Gate, which also includes beautiful High Wood and Nutnells Wood.

A number of specially waymarked and well trodden paths (Foresters' Walks) are used, as well as the Monarch's Way, but the walk also includes some less frequented paths which are well worth discovering, such as those giving access to Hockley Brook and Poolhouse Dingle.

DIRECTIONS

1 Join a footpath which runs from the pub car park to Fockbury Road. Continue opposite, diagonally across a field then along the edge of another to a junction. Turn left, descend to cross a brook, then turn left through meadows. Meeting a bridleway, continue in the same direction to a road. Take a path almost opposite then branch left on another path at a stile. Go through a gate and left to another stile. Walk across a field, gradually climbing to the top and proceeding along the edge to find a stile, then go obliquely left on a path trodden through long grass. After crossing a brook, the path is easily followed until a waymark directs you left to Hill Farm. Do go towards the farm but before you reach it turn right beside a hedge (look for the scant remains of badly damaged waymarks on a pine tree) and walk uphill to enter High Wood.

2 Proceed to a waymarked T-junction and turn left, then fork right at an unmarked junction. Ignore all branching paths but turn left as you approach the edge of the wood. Leave it at a gate and turn right past Highwood Cottage, following a bridleway to Woodcote Lane. Turn right then immediately right again. Walk through Nutnells Wood then continue along a field edge, through a gate in the next corner then immediately left, back into woodland. Walk through the wood and across a field to Dordale Road.

3 Turn left then take a path on the right at Dordale Green Farm. Follow it to a lane and join another path almost opposite. Walk along a field edge then along another for a short distance until you can cross to the adjacent field. Walk through several more fields to rejoin the lane - the path is easily followed, except at one point, where you should keep to the left of a hedge. Turn right at the lane, then take a path on the right soon after Poolhouse Farm. Walk to a junction near the far left corner of a field, then take the right-hand path, keeping to a field edge for 100m then going diagonally to a metal gate at the far left corner.

4 Turn right along a track, pass a pool and then go diagonally towards the far field corner. Go through a gap into an orchard, bear right on a well-trodden path and then turn left on a fenced path which you follow for some distance along field edges, across Poolhouse Dingle and then briefly through woodland, after which the path keeps to the woodland edge, by Hockley Brook. Nearly half-a-mile from Poolhouse Dingle an easily missed waymark directs you sharp right, across the brook then uphill through woodland. Continue along a field edge then turn right along Wood Lane.

5 Take any path you like through Pepper Wood - the Monarch's Way is most direct, but not necessarily the most interesting. All paths lead eventually to the far side of the wood. Cross a road to a bridleway opposite, keep straight on past Royal Content Farm but turn left when the bridleway is crossed by a footpath, which is easily followed across fields. When it forks, take the right-hand branch, then turn right along Yarnold Lane. After 200m there's a path on the left but this is one of those where waymarking is absolutely essential - and has therefore been removed. Until the waymarking has been reinstated I hesitate to recommend it, except to the most confident of walkers. If that's you, go for it. But anybody daunted by the prospect of wandering uncertainly through gardens and a nursery should stay on Yarnold Lane and then turn left on Warbage Lane.

6 Take a path on the left opposite Whinfield Road. Turn right when it enters a field, go downhill to cross a dingle, climb uphill then proceed to a stile (meeting the Yarnold Lane path here). Turn right, descend a holloway and keep straight on, signed Catshill'. Go straight on along a track at another junction (ie don't take a path into a wood) then turn right on a footpath by Rosevilla. Turn left at a track, then left again at a lane. Join a footpath by Orchard House and walk along the right-hand field edge. Turn right at a hedge corner and keep straight on to a junction. Turn left and then immediately right. The path is easily followed now, through fields and past Spout House to meet Bromsgrove Road at Battlefield Farm, near Park Gate.

FACT FILES

Start: Park Gate Inn, A448 west of Bromsgrove, grid ref SO936716.

Length: 9 miles/15.2km.

Maps: OS Explorer 219, OS Landranger 139.

Terrain: Woodland, pasture and arable, with a few slopes.

Footpaths: Most are excellent, but some are neglected, with poor waymarking (complaints to countryside@worcestershire.gov.uk).

Stiles: 35.

Parking: You may be able to use the inn car park; alternatively, there is a lay-by 300m along the road towards Bromsgrove, or start at Pepper Wood.

Buses: X3/X33 Areley Kings-Stourport-Kidderminster-Bromsgrove-Redditch services, daily; connections from Worcester 144/294/295/300/303/350; www.worcestershire.gov.uk/ bustimetables or Worcestershire Hub 01905 765765.

Refreshments: None currently available as Park Gate Inn is closed for refurbishment.

Worcester News recommends the use of OS Explorer Maps, your ideal passport to navigating the countryside. This walk is based on OS Explorer 219, OS Landranger 139

10:07am Monday 2nd June 2008

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