This was a pretty strange walk as far as walks go.
I really enjoy swimming in new places, so having read on the river swimming site that it's possible to swim in By Brook we decided to combine it with a walk round the area last weekend.
Parking in Slaughterford didn't look possible so we parked in a Layby in the villiage of Ford opposite the church. The main road was horribly busy full of speeding cars so it was a relief that we were soon off the main road. We walked down a smaller road and passed a rather nice looking pub, further down the road we were studying the map when a chap asked us where we were going and advised that our footpath off the road was a little further down on the left. Annoyingly there was no path on the road so we had to keep leaping out the way of cars.
We soon reached the style into a meadow which warned of no swimming, no picnicing, no boating, no fishing (NB NO HAVING FUN). The benches along the river had nice kindly signs warning you not to picnic and that the water contained Weils disease so you'd better not swim. Not one to pay much attention to notices I normally would have ignored them and had a swim but the water had a strange hue to it and the land was all a bit too farm animally for my liking. The river was very pretty though. We crossed a few weirs and had to limbo under another electric fence which was blocking the footpath with no way through (grr).
The river at Slaughterford was very pretty and had a nice beachy bit you could sit by the river at and have a paddle. We didn't stop though as it was still too soon for lunch. We passed by the ruins of lots of old mill works which had been kindly fenced off with private signs all over it too. Slightly further along the walk we also saw loads of ruin buildings which were also used for the same trade. Aparently these have been bought up and are gradually being redevloped to be rented to buisness's etc. It's a shame the area hasn't made more of what could have been quite an interesting history.
A little further along our track we stopped for lunch in a bit of a crap grassy lay by (we should have stopped earlier..) I was planning having a pee when a chap showed up out of the blue and started chatting. He turned out to be a local landowner and told us all about the area - including some local gossip about the water bailif who'd put up the signs, and the trials and tribulations of farming on a SSSI. The chap kindly said if we were ever in the area again to knock on his door and he'd take us fishing at his lake just down the valley. We walked with him to his farm and left him at that point as he was off to have a penut butter sandwhich. Before leaving us he kindly gave my daughter a £1!
Whilst walking along a muddy rutted track I saw a pair of shoes neatly placed to the side of the track. When I got home I read the following and it all made sence..
http://news.bbc.co.uk/local/wiltshire/hi/people_and_places/newsid_8314000/8314704.stmThe place was starting to feel a bit mid summer murders!
Once we passed through the woods we took a bit of a wrong turn and ended up navigating more fields than we needed to, it was all very rural and lovely though. I'd started to feel a bit ill though at this point and the rest of the walk became a bit of a struggle. We had fun trying to navigate our way round a local manor houses fields, I'm still not 100% sure that we idn't tresspass but the way though as marked on the map really wasn't clear. Once out of the farm land we'd planned to walk down the lane then come back off into the woods along a track. Sadly the track (despite not having any buildings on it) had private signs all over it, so we decided not to risk it. Another track further down thankfully got us to where we needed to be. A few over grown footpaths and a farmers field later we got back to the river much to my relief. So it was back through the unfriendly land and back to the car for a much needed rest.
