Beacon Hill in Leicestershire

We are away for a few days staying with Jan’s parents in Loughborough and have been on a trip to Beacon Hill in Leicestershire. As usual this has been an opportunity to take some photos!James presented his usual arguments that he didn’t want to go and he wouldn’t enjoy it but we packed Emma and him in the car anyway and we drove the very short drive from Loughborough to Beacon Hill lower car park.

I remember that I’ve been to Beacon Hill about 15 years ago and Jan came with me, but she didn’t remember ever going so it was a bit of an adventure for all of us.

From the car park, which cost £1.50 for a full days parking, we took the blue route which is a circular walk of about 2 1/2 miles which skirts round beacon hill itself and returns to the car park.

We set off and as we got a couple of hundred yards down the path the sun came out and we had some glorious weather. The path (above) starts to slope upwards a bit and we got some good views over the Leicestershire countryside to the right.

James and Emma found the route a bit hard going but they managed it without too many problems and when we eventually got to the top they were really excited. They carefully avoided the cows with big horns which were freely grazing round the summit, and ran about the top of beacon hill trying to stand on every rock they could find to prove they had been on the highest point.

We had brought Emma’s homework in the form of Barnaby Bear with us. She has a laminated drawing of Barnaby Bear which she takes with her on her holiday travels, and we take a picture of Emma with the bear wherever she goes.

In this case we sat her on the top of the summit marker and took a picture for her homework book.  She now uses this picture to write a story of her day out for her homework – pretty advanced stuff for four !

For the record beacon hill is the second highest point in Leicestershire at 802 feet high. At the summit is the usual marker which points out the different towns which you can see on a clear day, and we were lucky enough to be able to see quite a distance when we were there. We looked across the countryside to the west and we could see our next visit which was the Old John folly at Bradgate Park. As it turned out we didn’t do that trip because Emma was too tired so we planned that trip for another time.

I managed to get some pictures of the walk to the top and some landscape views when we were at the top. They are on my flickr photostream here.

We were at the top for about 15 minutes and then continued along the same path which took us on a circular route back to the car park. On the way we met several people walking their dogs and they were all friendly (both the dogs and the owners ! ) and let James and Emma pat the dogs.

Another thing which we noticed at various points of the walk were carvings made from tree stumps. There were faces and models which had been carved rather expertly by chainsaw. Again there are pictures on my photostream here.

Once we were back to the car park we walked across to an area labelled ‘native tree display’ which has an area set out for picnics and also has a wild garden and pond. In this part I got some pictures of a small copper butterfly feeding of a flower.

After a time James and Emma got bored and it was time for lunch so we got in the car and drove back to Loughbotough but we’ll remember that the Beacon Hill park is only just up the road from us when we’re in Loughborough and pay another visit.