Farnborough to Weybourne (Blackwater Valley Path 4)

The source of the Blackwater

A lovely day and we decided it was time to finish the Blackwater Valley Path. We picked up the route near Coleford Lake, crossed to the other side of the busy A331 and walked parallel to it along a narrow wooded strip. After a while we crossed under the road and followed close by it to eventually emerge at North Camp station.

The station is a very pleasant Victorian building in a Venetian gothic style, matched by the nearby Old Ford pub. The pub was getting ready for the World Cup, but was decked out - somewhat inappropriately as it now seems - with Union Jacks.



The river was by now quite narrow and heavily overgrown with reeds.



The next section was easily the best of the whole walk. We were now further away from the noise of the road and soon reached Hollybush Hill. This was a rubbish dump until 1980 when it was covered over with soil. It has now become a sunny flower meadow and a fine site for butterflies and moths. We saw a pair of Chalkhill Blues mating, but temporary incompetence prevented a completely satisfactory picture being taken.



A bit further on there was an impressive modern aqueduct carrying the Basingstoke Canal over the river and the A331. The route required us to climb up to it and cross over as well.



We saw a pair of swans with no less than seven cygnets, and a similar sized family of mallards.


The route then followed meadows beside the narrow river, but never far from the A331. Gradually it enters the built up area of Aldershot, passes behind Aldershot Park and in front of suburban housing.

In Badhsot Lea you follow the road for a while, skirt Badshot Lea lake and follow another stretch of road to enter the Rowhill Copse Nature Reserve. The river how has shrunk to a muddy ditch by the path.



After walking through this pleasant piece of woodland, you reach the source of the Blackwater. It is not a spring as one might expect, but a bog on sloping land.

From: Blackwater Valley Path (Blackwater Valley Countryside Partnership) Stages 4-1.

Map: Explorer 145 (Guildford and Farnham).

Conditions: dry, sunny, warm.

Distance: 8 miles.

Rating: two and half stars. Traffic noise for most of the way, and increasingly urban. The final section and the Hollybush Hill site were lovely however.


Sightings

I thought this might be a Dingy Skipper, but it turns out to be a Mother Shipton moth.




Flower of the day

We saw quite a bit of this cheerful Corn Camomile.