Walk 6: Touchdown Café to Hunscote Lane and Loxley

Start and finish at the Touchdown Café car park at Wellesbourne airfield. The terrain has a variety of paved road, grass fields, fields with crops and field and road verges. The route is flat with no significant inclines. There are nine stiles and various gates. Toilets, beverages and food, including breakfasts, are available in the café.

On leaving the car park turn right and then left into Hunscote Lane. The surface is mostly tarmac and then compacted earth. Continue along the lane for approximately 1 mile then about 100 yards after passing a house named Wayside and a barn on the left, turn left and follow the field border to the left. Continue for about ½ mile, keeping the field boundary on the left and crossing a wooden bridge.

Cross the stile ahead and carry straight on along a short stretch of surfaced track and continue through some trees ahead with houses on the right and Glebe Farm to the left. Along this section there is a stile and a gate and more trees passing Glebe Farm, coming out to a wide metal gate. Look for the yellow arrows.

Go through the gate keeping to the hedge on the right. Go to the corner of the field and turn left. Again keeping the hedge on the right, cross a stile and then go through a wide metal gate into a small copse. Cross the stile at the far right of the copse, turn left and go across the field, which may contain crops. There is a diagonal path which may be visible or follow the left hand border round. Cross two further fields to a hedge, and turn right. Keeping the hedge on the left, proceed to the corner and turn left and then immediately left through two gates. Follow the path to a gate onto the road. Turn left along the road (there is no footpath and in places no verge); after about 250 yards cross the stile on the left. Continue a short distance slightly left over a stile into a wood. Turn right in the wood and cross 3 further stiles coming out adjacent to a hedge on the right. Follow the hedge and through a kissing gate to the next field. Follow the hedge on the right around the field to the diagonal corner and continue into the field ahead keeping the hedge on your left. (Alternatively there are tracks used by farm vehicles which go diagonally through both fields and lead to a gate at the diagonal corner of the second field.)

Continue through two gates keeping the hedge on your left until reaching another gate which leads into the final field. Keep the hedge to the left and after 150 yards or so the path goes diagonally across the field to a stile on the far side, beside a willow tree. Climb the stile and follow the road to the left which leads back to the café car park in about 400 yards.

A shorter walk can be done along Hunscote Lane and back, approximately 1 hour. An extra loop, distance 1.2 miles, can be done following footpaths around Loxley. This is best done clockwise because of the steep slope down at the end. Parking is possible in the road near the school at the southern end of the route.

PD, LD

Loxley

The village started in a clearing just south of the church at the bottom of the hill and was given by King Offa of Mercia to the Cathedral at Worcester around 760 AD and later passed to Kenilworth Abbey.  The mediaeval village was abandoned at some stage and new houses were built higher up the hill.

In 1100 AD a generous man known as Robert Fitzodo is recorded as being the owner of the village ‘hence Robin of Loxley’, possibly the origin of the Robin Hood legend.

A large part of the village is a Special Landscape Area and the Church Meadow Nature Reserve, where traditional ridge and furrow strips can been seen, is a designated Site of Special Scientific Interest.

Buildings

Loxley Farm is the oldest building in the village still largely unaltered.

Listed Buildings

The old Rectory, Loxley Hall

St Nicholas Church – The current church, built on the site of a former Anglo-Saxon Church, was built with red sandstone from Kenilworth and consecrated in 1286.

Loxley Manor – on the dissolution of the monasteries in 1538 Robert Croft became the owner. It then passed to the Underhill family and in 1664 became the property of Edward Nash of Greenwich.

Fox Public House – The building dates back to the 1660s. At the time of writing it is closed awaiting new tenants.

Village School – Built in the 1830s.