Newton

East of the village of Clifton upon Dunsmore is an even smaller village named Newton.  My plan was to walk some of the rural public footpaths to the north and east of Newton recording them on the gps for uploading to the Open Street Map.  The recorded footpaths appear as blue lines in the following screen dump.

The red arrow in the bottom left of the picture above is my start and finish point.  The total distance walked would have been approximately 12km so not very far and with few hills it wasn’t much of a workout.  I’m getting unfit and fat!
The most unusual part of the walk was a short stretch down a lane track off the A5.  The track terminated in an aggregate and composting centre.  I found myself in the strange situation of walking into a quarry with major items of earthmoving equipment all around me.  My mind was screaming “Hazard…Hazard….. surely this can’t be a pubic footpath?”  A young machine operator was just closing down a frontend loader when I reached the centre of the quarry.  I asked him if this was a public footpath and he confirmed it was with a laugh.  He told me to keep on walking through the quarry to the very end where I would see a tunnel passing through the berm (embankment) surrounding the quarry.  And there at the very end of the quarry was a 6ft diameter concrete culvert pipe through the berm.

Right arrow – entrance to track from the A5.  Left arrow – location of culvert pipe
I’m still astonished that members of the public are allowed to walk through the middle of a working quarry.  I’m even more astonished that the quarry owners allow it; or haven’t provided a designated safe pedestrian route around the perimeter of their premises.