Ivanhoe Way - Ashby to Heath End

Friday 19th December 2008
We had planned to park in Tescos carpark to walk a section of the Ivanhoe way today but on the last Friday before christmas was not a good idea. We drove a little closer to Ashby and found a side street to park in instead.
We walked towards the town passing a bunch of young Santa Clauses - it must have been the last day of school at Ashby Grammar! When we reached the town we turned along North Street and found an Ivanhoe Way signpost pointing into a busy haulage yard which wasn't a good sign. We eventually found the footpath behind a lorry and set off behind some houses. The path was muddy and continued across rough ground and then alongside the McVities biscuit factory and under a road bridge for the busy A511. The path opened out a bit here as we crossed Old Park Pale woods and then a cross road of tracks and continued through new plantations of trees. This area was one of three medieval parks once surrounding Ashby. The plantations had been fenced off to keep the rabbits and deer out.
We saw a man looking at his map here and he warned us there was a very boggy bit coming up. His wife then appeared and told us it had taken her 15 minutes to negotiate about 20 yards. John was not wearing his boots today so we thought this was going to be interesting! We walked through the small wood and crossed a bridge over a stream and then found the boggy bit. We managed to cross it without too much trouble, I suspect it was easier because we were walking it uphill whereas they had been doing it downhill.
We stopped for coffee and christmas cake at the next stile and then continued past a farm where we were chased by a flock of geese. They gave up when they were reminded how close to christmas it was!
The path continued to a lane which we followed to Heath End, a small hamlet where we left the Ivanhoe way. There should have been a pub here, which was marked on the map, but we could not see it (when I checked when we got home, there are mentions of the Saracens head, but it closed several years ago - presumably it is now one of the houses we passed). We walked along the road and then discovered we were off course, so we retraced our steps to find the footpath.
We crossed a bridge and then walked towards some woodland. The ground looked reasonably firm here but just before we got to the stile John found a wet bit and his foot went through the mud to the calf filling his walking shoes with muddy water -yuck. He shook his foot and we managed to get to the stile without further misshap.
We walked through a very nice stretch of woodland and approached a very slippery stile. As we crossed we saw some people approaching. They were the same couple that we had seen earlier. They commented on the muddy state of our trousers but said that the rest of the path was ok. We continued and crossed a large area of grassland which had a very strong smell of curry. We could only assume it was coming from the distant farmhouse but it was very strong. It started raining here so we stopped to put up hoods.
We followed the path round the farm and ended up on the busy A511. We had obviously missed a path somewhere. We walked beside the road for about 200m and then saw a footpath sign up the embankment. We climbed the embankment and a fence to put us back on the footpath and off the road.
The path passeed parallel to the road and then towards a farm. A man parked his car at the junction and let his dogs out to walk but they proceded to chase us down the road despite him calling them. John roared at the horrid yappy thing which turned and went back to its owner. We walked round the farm and emerged at the crossing of tracks that we had reached earlier in the walk. We had planned to do a circular extension to the walk here, but bearing in mind the mud and that we had parked closer to Ashby than originally planned we decided to retrace our steps along the Ivanhoe way. We had walked 14km.