Sunday, 3rd September 2023 – Collingham to Newark
Today’s 8.5 miles walk followed the River Trent upstream, mostly along a section of The Trent Valley Way in Nottinghamshire.
There were 24 walkers and 4 non-walkers this month. Sandy welcomed two new walkers and we gave them our usual welcome. The coach dropped us off at Collingham where we set off with a spring in our step. Collingham is a very pretty village with a large number of old listed buildings.
We followed a path which eventually led us to The Trent Valley Way and lovely views of the river, which was tidal at this point. Further up river we reached Cromwell Weir where, in 1975, ten soldiers on a training exercise sadly perished when their boat accidentally went over the weir on a very stormy night.
As we carried on, a number of flooded gravel pits appeared which were part of a nature reserve. We had sightings of Bar-tailed Godwit, Kingfisher, Little Egret, Redshank, Grey Heron and Mute Swans, which pleased those with binoculars. There were lots of butterflies on the purple buddlias, including colourful Red Admirals, and little frogs were seen on the grassy riverbank.
We then stopped off at the village of Winthorpe for an hour to have our packed lunch and a drink at The Lord Nelson pub, a lovely grade II listed building. After this we carried on towards Newark, still with impressive views of the vast river Trent. We came across some young men magnet fishing who had found a bike and were very happy with that. By now the temperature had risen to 25 degrees C.
Arriving at Newark-on-Trent at about 2.30pm, we had plenty of spare time before the coach departed. Most chose to look around this lovely market town with its many cafes, pubs and interesting buildings, such as the Castle where notorious King John died in 1216.
Thank you Trevor for leading the walk. We are all grateful for the effort that went into it, and thanks go to Dave Dove for back-marking. Blog photos are from myself, Graham, Dave Tyson and Dave Carroll.
