Our Annual Long Walk - 10th Sept 2016 - The Opencast Way


 With a few members on long term sick, and a few folk on holiday. Only the long suffering walk sec and good ol Roy T made it to our 7:30 start time in the middle of Scunthorpe (Atkin’s Warren cp) for our 2016 annual long walk.

 The day’s wet weather promised to break around 1pm.

 Firstly, before the countryside we had to make it out of the town centre using the ridgeway that dominates this part of the world, a small diversion leaving Yaddlethorpe before the crossing of the M180 and the urban-ness was behind us.

 We found the route well way marked in places but a wrong turn is easy enough in the housing developments :-).

 Early morning break was taken in the porch at Messingham Church (to escape the rain) and to our surprise the door opened, we had a word with some helpers getting ready for an open day, showed them our route and asked about local amenities en-route.

 Messingham being the most Southerly point today we began heading North to Holme and Bottesford and a very pleasant Beck, with the rain intensifying we made our way to some large fish ponds just across from the Steelworks, another diversion around the ponds and a desperate crossing of the A18 we were thankful when we made it to the car park near to Raventhorpe farm. A quick route through Manby Wood brought us to the Roman Rd of Ermine St and The Dog and Rat in Broughton gave us lunch and some more respite from the weather.

 Leaving Broughton through Manby Woods again took us back towards the Steelworks with some interesting industrial views of the steelworks, negotiating an open area avoiding being run over by some trails bikes the path took us to a very grimy Santon.

 In need of some countryside we made our way through Risby Warren, a wonderful area of open heathland (keeping to paths as subsidence warning notices were everywhere!) still heading north we came across Roxby and it’s lovely church and at the most northerly town of Winterton we had our afternoon stop.

 Turning South along a desperate path and metalled rd next to some opencast workings (route named because of the abundance of open cast workings (sand, gravel and iron ore)) and a spoil heap we eventually crossed Normanby Road. Now moving south towards Atkinson’s Warren we saw the sun for the first time today and finished the walk reasonably dry-ish.

 A pleasant 32ml walk, with some very good countryside, interesting historical industry and present day industry seen from afar.