Pete's Walks- Maidensgrove Common and College Wood (page 4 of 4)
If you are considering walking this route yourself, please see my disclaimer. You may also like to see these notes about the maps and GPX files.
As usual at this time of year, I could smell Wild as I entered the woods of the nature reserve. I hurried on my way along the byway - after a very hot and sunny start to the day it had clouded over and grown much cooler, I was worried about getting caught in a thunderstorm. It was about a mile through the woods until I reached the visitor centre (on my right, with the small car park on my left). There was a map on the reception desk showing where the different orchids were, which I photographed just in case I couldn't remember. I ate my lunch at the picnic tables next to the car park, then spent 10 minutes or so looking for the Orchids - I saw Greater Butterfly Orchid, White Helleborine (both of which I'd already seen elsewhere, earlier this week) and Bird's-nest Orchid (which was a first for the year), but there were no Fly or Lesser Butterfly Orchids this year (or maybe I was too early or too late for them).
The byway through Warburg nature reserve
The byway through Warburg nature reserve
The byway through Warburg nature reserve
The byway through Warburg nature reserve
The byway through Warburg nature reserve
The byway through Warburg nature reserve
The byway through Warburg nature reserve, approaching the visitor centre
Greater Butterfly Orchid
Bird's-nest Orchid
White Helleborine
I was now getting distinctly worried about the possibility of a thunderstorm, so instead of going back to the visitor centre, going a few more yards left along the byway and then turning left on a footpath to Maidensgrove, I took the footpath going uphill through the middle of the reserve - this soon merged with that other path, and led on to a junction with another byway or bridleway, where I turned left to immediately reach the end of a lane by Lodge Farm, Maidensgrove. I turned left along the lane until it turned right, where I went left along a track to reach Maidensgrove Common. I followed the left edge of the common as far as the lane that crosses it, where I turned right to return to my car.
The path out of the Warburg nature reserve
The path out of the Warburg nature reserve
The lane through Maidensgrove
Maidensgrove Common
I was right about the coming thunderstorms. I got home without seeing any rain, but later on between about 4:30pm and 5:30pm we had a truly awful thunderstorm in Kensworth, with thunder or lightning every few seconds and a torrential downpour. My nearest town, Dunstable, was flooded - the High Street was like a river, and the main road going east to Luton was closed by the floods, it was on the national BBC News.
It had been a very pleasant walk, and fitted in very well with a visit to the Warburg nature reserve. I had hoped to do a slightly longer walk (last year I was still suffering from post-viral fatigue, so about eight miles was all I could really manage), but the weather forecast prevented that. The new section I did along Russell's Water Common and then the steep path down into the valley from near the Five Horseshoes was really good, and I'm sure I'll use that on other walks in the future.