Charnwood 4 trigs & a cairn
There are four hills in Charnwood Forest with trig points on top, and only one with a cairn (as far as I know). The four trigs form an obvious circuit, but the hill with the cairn is right in the middle, and it took quite a while looking at the map before I decided how to fit it in. It's been a year or two since I formulated this route, and I have just been waiting for a suitable opportunity. In church this morning for the Good Friday service, my wife mentioned that she would be dashing off afterwards to watch our son and his girlfriend in a tennis tournament. So I would be left alone; the sun was shining, the mud has (mostly) dried up, and the nettles and brambles haven't come up yet. If not now, when?
Today's timings for the walk were as follows (yes, I was walking, there's no way I could run this distance now):-
Home to Beacon Hill (248m): 44 mins.
Beacon Hill to Timberwood Hill (the cairn, 248m): 61 mins.
Timberwood Hill to Bardon Hill (278m): 53 mins.
Bardon Hill to High Cademan (197m): 66 mins.
High Cademan to Ives Head (201m): 60 mins.
Ives Head to home: 83 mins.
Add in a rather generous total of 36 mins spent refuelling at the summits, for a total time of 6 hrs, 43 mins.
I didn't take the shortest feasible route everywhere, to reduce the amount that I would be retracing my steps, and to reduce the amount of road walking. So I went straight up the east face of Timberwood Hill, but instead of going straight back down, I took the little circuit on the permissive paths to the north. I went round to the west side of High Cademan for my traditional scramble up the rocks (and nearly got stuck!). I took the path across the top end of Blackbrook Reservoir to get off the roads. And I made a navigational blunder coming off Ives Head, and ended up going round three sides of a square field.
I suggest two and a half hours as a target for any half-decent fell runner attempting this route (though you won't be starting and finishing from my home, so I suggest the car park at the end of Moat Road in Loughborough as start/finish, which would reduce the distance and climbing by a very small amount). Or do it as a circuit round the five summits, not starting or finishing at Loughborough; in which case the route from Ives Head to Beacon Hill should not be along the road, but use the footpath round the top of Longcliffe Quarry and the permissive path over Whittle Hill.
