Great Yeldham Footpath Walks,
11b. Poole Farm, Railway Meadows, anti-clockwise walk.

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Walk 11b Route map

2 hours. About 4¼ miles.

There is one stile to climb.

Start: Great Yeldham Village Green.

Go up Leather Lane. Shortly beyond where Butlers Way branches off on the right, there is a length of hedge on the right followed by an opening with a garage.

Cross over by the concrete footpath sign and go up the path which is to the left of the garage. It is a narrow path between trees on each side. Follow the path ahead as far as you can ignoring unofficial branches off to the right into the next field. The path then goes right leaves and continues on the field side of the hedge for a very short distance to a footbridge.

Cross the footbridge and turn right. Follow the farm track with the hedge on your right. Follow the track where the boundary first turns left ignoring the gap on the right, follow it as it bends right and left again before going through a gap on the right to a farm road with a concrete slab on the left, and then with hedges on both sides. Follow this short, straight track to a gap just before the gate at the end.

Go through the gap and down the middle of a cultivated field aiming for a gap at the bottom with a post just visible from a distance. This and the next field are often left for some time after ploughing or cultivating before the path is restored. It is heavy clay soil and can be very muddy. Cross a footbridge into the next field and continue up the middle of the field to the corner of the wood at the top.

Go ahead along a wide grass track passing the wood on your left. At the far side of the next field go right through a kissing gate, over a footbridge and left over an unmade farm track. This track can be very muddy. Where the track joins a hard farm road go right down to Poole Farm yard.

Go left in the yard and keep ahead to leave it along an unmade farm road with a hedge on your left and a paddock fence on your right. Go ahead through a way-marked gateway (you may have to climb the gate if it is fixed shut). Keep ahead with the hedge on your left along a long narrow meadow, go through another way-marked gate and a gateless gap to the top far corner. The River Colne is at the bottom of the meadows, with the recreated and preserved Colne Valley Railway on the other side.

Go left over a rather rickety way-marked stile into a field. Go ahead a short way up the side of the field and go right over a footbridge into another field. Go ahead along the bottom side of the field with a fence on your right to the narrow far end. Go left a short way to the road and go left along Kirby Hall Road.

Go left at the second opening on the left by a footpath signpost into a field. Go ahead under a pylon along the side of the field with the hedge on your right. At the corner follow the path diagonally across the field to meet the end of the hedge.

As the hedge goes off to the right keep ahead along a narrow strip between two fields. After the end of a hedge on your left the path widens into a hard, grassy farm track. Go along the track down to a way-marked junction with a hard farm road. Go left towards Poole Farm for a short distance then return the way you came from the village: go right along an unmade track which can be so muddy as to be almost impassable.

At the next field entrance go right over a footbridge and left though a kissing gate. Continue along a wide grass track towards Yeldham with the hedge on your left.

You will pass a small wood on your right. At the far corner of the wood keep ahead across a cultivated field, over a bridge in the gap at the bottom, and up another cultivated field. Both these fields may be left for some time after being ploughed or cultivated before the path is restored. They are a heavy clay soil and can be very muddy.

Go through the gap at the top of the field and go right (ignore the gate on the left which goes down Spayne's Hall drive), along a farm road with hedges on both sides into the next field.

Go ahead through into the next field. Continue with the hedge on your left as it turns right, left and right again, to the far side of the field. Go left across a footbridge and follow the path as it immediately goes through a gap on the right from the field side of the hedge to the inside of an overgrown green lane. Follow the path between the trees to Leather Lane. Go left down the road to the Village Green.

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6 Apr 2013