Heart of England Way Day 1

Day 1 - Milford to Lichfield Cathedral - 15 Miles

I decided that I would start this walk with a bang. I had a free weekend on the 5th and 6th of October and decided I would try to do the first two sections all in that weekend. I hoped to have done 30 miles by the Sunday evening! I got up at normal workday time on the Saturday morning and my mum drove me all the way to the village of Milford nestling on the Northern edge of Cannock Chase. We arrived at about 10am and, after my mum had taken my 'setting off photo', I traipsed up the first hill from the car park. At the top I found two old Scot's Pines. These were apparently planted in 1770, along with others on several of the hilltops of the Chase, to commemorate Admiral Anson's sailing around the world in 1740. The Anson family were the residents of nearby Shugborough Hall at the time and the whole of Cannock chase was part of their estate.
Me clutching my two guidebooks at the start of the Heart of England Way at Milford carpark.	One of the old Scot's pines planted in 1770 at the top of the first rise onto the Chase.
Despite it being so near to where I live, I had never really explored Cannock Chase, and I was to be quite impressed with my day's walking over it. It is a steep sided plateau of gravel and sand covering 26 square miles and rises clear from the rolling green fields of Staffordshire, but is cut in two by the steep valley between Rugeley and Cannock. Plant nutrients are quickly washed out of the loose, free draining ground. This is obvious on the open heath in the northwest, which is covered by heather, bracken, bilberry and birch. Much of the southern area, however, is now covered with Forestry Commission Scots and Corsican pines, planted close in dense regimented rows. From the old pine trees I entered a straight cutting running uphill for a quarter of a mile to Mere Pools. This, and the next section of path winding gradually up and around the edge of the chase to the top, is the old track bed of the "Tackeroo Railway" built by the Army in 1915 to supply two First World War training camps on the Chase. The line ran from the main line at Milford to the Cannock to Rugeley line at Hednesford. The silver birches dotted about the heath land on my way up to the summit were lovely in their autumnal colours and the views out over Staffordshire to the North made a lovely backdrop.
The typical bracken and silver birch landscape of the northern half of the Chase, taken from the track bed of the old "Tackeroo Railway".	And again, looking north.
After the summit of Coppice Hill the landscape changed again. The next valley was more like open moorland, covered with heather and sparsely populated with only the odd silver birch tree. The month before the heather would have been fantastic in flower! The next point of interest I was looking forward to seeing in the guidebooks was the Boulderstone… an 'erratic' carried by glacial ice all the way from the Grampian Mountains in Scotland during the last Ice Age. Indeed the whole of the Chase was formed as the ice sheet which covered the midlands melted, dumping huge quantities of stone, gravel and sand that it had gauged out and carried on its way south over Scotland, Wales and Northern England. I had been imagining the erratic to be a HUGE boulder for it to be mentioned on the maps and was quite disappointed when I arrived to see something less than a meter in every dimension and set in a rather horrid looking concrete base set with pebbles:) Oh well!
Into the next valley its more like true heather moor land with sparser tree cover.	And again!
The rather disappointing Boulderstone glacial erratic.	And more heather 'moorland' beyond.
I carried on across the top of the moor land on wide stony tracks to Ansons Bank, the sun occasionally peeping out from behind the veil of grey cloud above. From here the trees again took over from the heather and I made my way down to a road and a handy café, where I stopped for a nice bacon sandwich!:) Satisfied, I crossed the road and set off east for a while along a main forest track cutting across the Sher Valley. A hundred yards or so from the café on the left of the track I came across the Katyn Memorial, which was erected in memory of 14000 Polish officers and professionals murdered in the Katyn Forests in 1940. The mass grave of the victims, all shot by a single bullet in the back of the neck, was discovered by the Germans in 1943 and for years this atrocity was blamed on the Nazis. It has more recently emerged that the Russians were responsible, the killings ordered to deprive Poland of leadership as a prelude to a Soviet invasion.
The Katyn Memorial.	Approaching the first proper regimented pines of the southern half of the Chase.
After a mile or so the landscape of the Chase changed again as I started to make my way through close packed blocks of Forestry Commision planted pines. After a while of walking through these I emerged onto Marquis Drive. This is a track that crosses much of the Chase and is named after Henry William Paget, the Earl of Uxbridge and Beaudesert, who was also the Marquis of Angelsey. He was cavalry commander and second in command to the Duke of Wellington at Waterloo, where a cannonball took off his leg. I carried on along this drive, passing a clearing now occupied by the Cannock Chase Visitor Centre. During the Second World War it was the site of RAF Hednesford, which had replaced the old First World War training camps on the Chase and housed 400 staff and 4,000 trainees. From here Marquis Drive descends a long hill to the main road and railway line in the valley bottom running between Cannock and Rugeley. This hill is called Kitbag Hill, after the hordes of RAF trainees who struggled up it carrying their heavy kitbags from the railway drop off point up to RAF Hednesford.
Beeches soften the edges of pine plantations from Kitbag Hill.	And of course the ever present Silver Birch.
After crossing the railway and road at the bottom, I continued back uphill along Marquis Drive opposite until I reached a road junction, I then took a straight woodland path across the shallow valley of Beaudesert Old Park on the Eastern edge of the Chase. I made the final climb and eventually reached the Iron Age Fort of Castle Ring at the south eastern edge of the Chase. At 801 feet, this is the highest point on the Chase and indeed the whole of The Heart of England Way! I would have taken a picture of the Fort, but in truth there was little to be seen, just a ditch and ridge enclosing 17 acres of scrub. Excavations inside the fort suggest that it was occupied (perhaps not continuously) until 500AD. There may have even been a hunting lodge here in Mediaeval times. From the fort I reached a road through the houses of Cannock Wood, the first real settlement of the day since Milford!, and then descended gradually to reach Gentleshaw Common. This is a 200 acre area of heath land that gently slopes southwards from the heights of Cannock Chase to the north, down to the pastures and farmland of South Staffordshire. It is an SSSI important for its heathers, grasses and bog plants, which make an ideal habitat for lizards, skylarks and the rare green hairsteak butterfly. To prevent the bracken, birch and oak trees from re-colonising they are periodically cut, and the heather is periodically cut to encourage new growth. This simulates the farming systems which created the heath; grazing, with cutting of bracken for animal bedding and scrub for fuel. As I descended on a path alongside a lane, great views south and westwards were to be had out across the industrial areas of North Birmingham. They were far enough away to be pretty though, rather than ominous, and merely served to remind me that I WAS in the industrial midlands, a fact that so far during the day I could easily have forgotten with the beautiful walk across the Chase. After crossing a lane at the bottom I entered yet another landscape of pastureland and fields eventually emerging onto a lane. Turning left along it I couldn't resist going into The Drill Inn, the first pub of the day. I was amazed to see from the clock in there that it was only 2.45pm! I had made good time and felt fine with no real aches and pains, the majority of the hard walking already done for the day as well. After downing a pint I set off again along the lane and then along a track to the next lane and another pub, which was unfortunately shut. From here it was across fields with Maple Brook on my right and then across more fields to a pretty lane cut through sandstone, for the final approach to Lichfield.
The path across Beaudesert Old Park onthe way to Castle Ring at the edge of the Chase.	The Drill Inn, my first watering hole of the day.
My first glimpse of Lichfield Cathedral's three spires on my final approach.	The lane cut through sandstone on the way to the A51.
I eventually crossed the busy A51 around the edge of Lichfield and then made my way around the edge of a golf course and along the road to reach the beautiful Cathedral Close at about 4.15pm, my planned destination for the day! I had done 15 miles in a good time and felt tired but not too bad at all! Because my mum was busy and couldn't pick me up until about 6.15pm I toyed with the idea of carrying on, but eventually decided that with walking tomorrow as well I ought not do too much on the first day. So I took photos around the Cathedral Close which is beautiful. The Cathedral itself is built of brown sandstone and is of a unique design in Britain with its three spires towering above the Close and nicknamed the 'Ladies of the Vale' by many. The building suffered some terrible damage in 1541 during Henry VIII's Reformation, and later during the Civil war. Almost nothing remains from the Norman period, the transepts are early 13th century, the nave a little later, with the west front and east ends edging into the next century. However, the building was so extensively remodelled between 1856 and 1890 by Sir Giles Gilbert Scott that it now has the appearance of a Victorian Cathedral. The richly encrusted west front dominates the building, row upon row of statues of Kings and Saints looking down upon the visitor.
The impressive entrance to the Cathedral Close, Lichfield.	And again!
The impressively decorated west front of the Cathedral.	The main west door to the Cathedral.
Close up of some of the rows of statues decorating the west front.	Old statue of Charles II, looking rather the worse for wear by the Cathedral.
View of the Cathedral above Minster Pool.	Minster Pool, Lichfield.
Dam Street, from the cathedral close into the town centre of Lichfield.
Photos taken, I wandered into town to have a McDonalds for tea, and look around the shops and then had a pint in the pub while I waited for mum to pick me up.