Author: Richard

HFG – Walk this Thursday – Cancelled

Update. Unfortunately we have had to cancel tomorrow’s walk.

So far, no one has confirmed their attendance at the proposed public walk at Peplow this Thursday, details HERE.

If you would like to attend then please contact David Wilson ASAP, and certainly by 5pm tomorrow (Wed) evening. If we have no confirmed takers by that time the event will not run – but we do hope to see some of you at the next scheduled walk in June, for which you are again encouraged to register.

Wollerton’s Jubilee Street Party

Wollerton Village Room have arranged a Jubilee Street Party. Join family, friends and neighbours to celebrate the Queen’s Platinum Jubilee – in style!

It’s a ‘Bring & Share’ Lunch on Sunday 5th June from 12 –4pm and will be held outside Wollerton Village Room (but under cover if it rains!)

A formal invite will be delivered to homes in Wollerton plus parts of Lostford and Wood Lane shortly, but if you live elsewhere in Hodnet Parish and would like to come along you’d be welcome.

There will be: Gazebos, Bunting, & Lots of Balloons. Music, a Quiz, plus Additional Fun Activities including a Royal-themed Biscuit(s)Competition (under12s) and Royal-themed Cake Competition (over 12s)

Please bring along:

✓A buffet style lunch adequate for the size of your party &/or to share with others.

✓Plates, crockery and glasses [or paper/plastic as safer] for your party, and maybe some chairs [see below].

✓Soft drinks, bubbly and beers.

✓Your cake or biscuit competition entries.

✓Unionjacks, crowns & tiaras and anything you think of that will add to the fun of the day!

On the day:

Please arrive from 12 o’clock onwards. Please place your shared food items onto the buffet tables provided, outside the Village Room. Food should ideally have a cover to protect it from flies [or rain!] and if possible make a label so that people can see what delicious items are available to choose from.

Please place your royal-themed cake and biscuit(s)competition entries on the tables provided inside the Village Room. These will be judged by ballot from 1pm. A prize will be awarded for the most popular designs.

Tables and chairs will be set out in the street. We are hoping there will be enough for us all – but it may help/you’d be welcome to bring your own tables/chairs too.

Hopefully many of those attending can walk there, but additional car parking will be available at Wollerton Bowls & Social Club and also at the Tennis Club.

If you’d like any further information, please email wollertonvillageroom@gmx.com

We’re looking forward to seeing you!

Note. To facilitate the street party, the road will be closed immediately outside the Village Room from 10am to 6pm. A short vehicular diversion will therefore be in place – past the old animal pound and Catchem Corner to join Drayton Road, or via the Mill Road/Wood Lane crossroads to reach/leave houses in the village located on/off Mill Road.

HFG – Public Walks 2022

We have decided to again organise a few public events this year, and depending how they go may do more later.

In the past our walks have attracted a diverse bunch of local folk, so why not come along for a pleasant stroll in good company?

Free parking is available at all start points. Accompanied children and dogs [on leads] welcome on all walks. Sensible footwear advised, plus a drink/snack – and maybe a torch on the Glow Worm walk. Most walks are between 2 – 3 hrs duration.

Make a note in your diary now, and keep up to date via the Hodnet website or our groups own Facebook page – search for Hodnet Footpath Group. Better still, register your interest and we’ll keep you informed of chnages/developments.

Note. If weather is terrible, these events will be cancelled. If you have emailed David Wilson he will add you to our list of ‘friends’ and then he can send a cancellation email on the day to warn you. So, please do let him know in advance which walk you’d like to attend, and how many will be accompanying you. Thanks.

Register your interest via: david.wilson65@icloud.com

The walk routes can all be seen in the relevant walk leaflets, downloadable from https://hodnet.org.uk/main/index.php/tourism/local-walk-leaflets/

PROGRAMME

Thursday May 12th – Peplow to Stoke on Tern church, and return (Hodnet Walks 9).

This is a varied and interesting walk through relatively unknown countryside. Depart 10.00 AM from Peplow Chapel where we’ll meet. There is limited roadside/verge parking by Chapel, so share vehicles if coming in a group. Note If you feel the complete walk is to far for you, you could arrange to leave a spare car by Stoke on Tern church and end the walk there.

Thursday 2nd June – Wollerton Wetlands and to Helshaw Grange. (Hodnet Walks 5)

A varied walk with good views. Depart 10.00AM. Meet/roadside parking by Wollerton Village Room.

Friday July 1st – Annual evening Glow Worm walk (Hodnet Walks 1).

Meet by old Railway Line bridge on Station Road, Hodnet, for a 10.30PM (nightime!) departure. Note. As we require a dry/warm night for this, if it is wet/raining this walk will be delayed to the following Friday – 8th July.

Hodnet Footpath Group: meeting

We are having our next meeting at 7.30pm on the 8th Dec.

This is being held at the Wollerton Bowls/Social Club – not the Hodnet Social Club, as (incorrectly) stated in the Parish Magazine.

Anyone interested in our work/helping us, as we consider what our 2022 activities might be, will be very welcome.

If you’d prefer a chat beforehand, please call Richard on 685286.

Annual Glow Worm Walk 25/6/21

In view of the disruption/uncertainty over group events this year, due to Covid 19, Hodnet Footpath Group are not planning our usual programme of public walks.

However, we do intend to run just one event, and that is the annual late evening glow worm walk on the Hodnet to Wollerton stretch of the old railway line. This is scheduled for Friday 25th June (if too cold/wet to go it will be on the following Friday – 2nd July.

This is always a popular event (around 60 people attended in 2019), not least as glow worms are nationally scarce and locally very rare.

This year numbers attending will be limited to 30 pre-booked spaces – reflecting the Government’s limit on numbers attending outdoor events – from 17th May.

Whilst it is possible all restrictions on numbers will be lifted by 21st June, it would be a hostage to fortune to currently assume that IS going to happen. So, to avoid disappointment we are following the current number limit on such events.

Booking for the glow worm walk is free, but is on a ‘first come first served’ basis – but with a reserve list maintained. We will use this reserve list to fill received cancellations or if restrictions are further eased by the date of the event.

For more details/to reserve your place please contact our Secretary, David Wilson, using : david.wilson65@icloud.com or 07970 304169. Please provide/note he will ask you for: your name and contact information, plus the names of those coming with you.  

INSTRUCTIONS: We will meet at 10.30pm by the old railway bridge on Station Road, Hodnet. Come in suitable footwear and clothing. Dogs on leads OK, children too (leads not needed!). Torches may be useful for the homeward walk, which is usually around 11.45pm/Midnight.

IMPORTANT: In consideration of those who may not wish to be part of a larger/unstructured party please do not try to attend this event if you are not able to officially book on. You can of course visit under your own steam on another evening if you wish. Warm dry evenings as it goes dark, from mid June to mid July, are the best times to spot our glow worms. They usually lurk at the base of tufts of grass/straggly vegetation on the edge of the short grassed areas of the old railway line embankment between Hodnet and Wollerton. Look for a pale green/white spot of light.

Help Out to Walk Out!

From Hodnet Footpath Group

Over the past year we have seen a big increase in the number of people using our local paths; partly because of the effect of Covid 19 exercise restrictions and partly, we like to think, because our 10 local walk leaflets coupled with the repairs/signage/clearance work we do have all made it easier for people to discover what is on their doorstep.

With uncertainty still ahead, we are not planning a programme of public walks this year, our priority instead being to carry out neglected items of maintenance, e.g. stile repairs and cutting back vegetation.

As with many such groups, we are surprisingly few in number (and not getting any younger!) so would be very grateful to anyone who would consider joining our group &/or assisting in our occasional work parties. We are a friendly, informal bunch and not only do we do ‘good works’ but we have some fun too!

So, if you’ve enjoyed our walks and appreciate the (often hidden) work that facilitates them, please help to make a difference for the future and get in touch. Contact details are on our webpage, see HERE, or find us on Facebook.


Hodnet Doctor Stops Pancake Day

That headline got your attention!

However, this is nothing to do with the esteemed doctors of today’s Hodnet Medical Centre, but relates to an Feb 1886 Newspaper article, topical at the time, that was this week posted on Facebook’s ‘Shropshire Tales, History & Memories page’.

The article comes from Eddowes’s Shrewsbury Journal, and around 20 years after his death it seems Dr Walmsley was clearly still well remembered – perhaps as he seems to have been Hodnet’s first recognisable resident GP as well as a bit of a character.

At least two of his early medicine bottles survive, see picture of one of them below.

Note. The writer is always interested in acquiring more local old bottles and containers, so if you’ve got some to re-home, maybe after a ‘lockdown clear out’, please do get in touch via email at Contact Me

Have you ever walked/ridden between Peplow and Ollerton? If so please read.

From Stoke Upon Tern Parish Council.

WANTED – People who have walked or ridden between Ollerton and Peplow

For many years some residents of this area have used a route (indicated A – B on the accompanying map) to walk, cycle or ride horses between Peplow Chapel and Ollerton Lodge, and vice versa.

In 2016 (conscious that the described route does not appear on official maps as a recognised public right of way) Stoke upon Tern Parish Council lodged an official claim with Shropshire Council to have this route legally recognised – and thus protected for future use.

The legal process involves examination of historic documents, but rests heavily on past users of the route completing a simple ‘user statement’ – covering matters such as the route used, the years it was used and whether or not its use was effectively ‘as of right’. Some 28 statements were submitted, which the Parish Council felt was a considerable number from a small rural area.

Recently Shropshire Council completed their official investigation, but unfortunately turned down the application. Their reasons for this appear to centre partly on a lack of historical evidence but, more importantly, also from a stated lack of user statements from people who have no connection with Peplow Hall’s tenanted homes or previous owners/occupiers of land at Ollerton Park.

The Parish Council feels that the case for this route being recognised is fairly strong and that, for various reasons, Shropshire Council’s decision is flawed. Accordingly we have lodged an appeal to have the case reviewed by the Planning Inspectorate. This process provides a brief opportunity* to submit new/further evidence, and with that in mind we URGENTLY need EVERYONE who has ever used this route, and may wish to do so again, to complete a user statement.

If you have not already completed a statement please do get in touch with the Clerk (details below) immediately and the necessary forms will be sent to you. After completion they can be scanned and emailed back or posted. In either case the Clerk will arrange for them to be submitted to the Planning Inspectorate.

Any documentary evidence/photos of the route in past use would also be welcome, especially any relate to claims already received of past use by the military, e.g. troop movements between Peplow Railway Station and RAF Peplow (aka Childs Ercall/Eaton upon Tern airfield) during and after WWII.

If you’d like to help secure this route for future generations please consider whether you or others in your household could complete a statement, or if you know of relatives, friends or neighbours who may have used it and could do so– even if they’ve since moved away.

*Documents need to be submitted to the Planning Inspectorate by 27thNovember 2020.

If the appeal is lost there will be no opportunity to revisit the subject, so please don’t delay ACT TODAY!

Graham Bould.

Clerk – Stoke Upon Tern Parish Council

Email: stokeparishcouncil@hotmail.co.uk or Phone: 01952 594758

Claimed route is shown in black.
Note FP 9 is rarely used and officially ends by the river.

Annual Glow Worm Walk is Cancelled

For the avoidance of doubt, as the Hodnet Footpath Group’s walk programme for 2020 was posted on this site at the start of the year (in a pre-Covid age!), the scheduled group walk next Friday (19th June) is not running – like all our events so far this year.

That does not mean that people cannot go and try to spot these curious creatures under their own steam – most appearing along the embankment at the Wollerton end of the former railway line walk from Hodnet to Wollerton. If you do wish to do so, choose a warm evening after dusk, e.g 10pm onwards at this time of year; and then look for the little blue/white glow in the base of the longer grasses at the edge of the track. In the right conditions you should see a few, and if you’re lucky tens of them – it’s nature and unpredictable!

Do not:

  • all go on the 19th June – a week or so either side usually produces results.
  • if others are there doing the same, maintain ‘social distancing’.
  • disturb them, they only get one chance to breed.

Stoke Heath cut off – as Wollerton Wetlands Flood!

Storm Dennis has seen the Wollerton Wetlands live up to their name, as these pictures show.

River levels are about 1ft down on their peak last night; and whilst those familiar with this area will recognise the footbridge, much else at the moment is ‘beneath the waves’ – with a walk over the field path from here to Stoke Heath definitely not on the cards!