YOU won't find access to Lower Thrift Farm, near Whitbourne, marked on Ordnance Survey maps, so it's unlikely you'll meet other walkers.

It's a Countryside Stewardship site, where the farmer receives payments in return for practising sound environmental management and providing public access.

The access agreement for this site runs until September 2011.

There are nearly 2,000 such sites scattered throughout the country, but few in the Midlands are as lovely or as peaceful as this.

It's situated in the valley of Whitbourne Brook, with semi-natural woodland clothing the steep slopes on one side of the brook, and orchards of cider apples and damsons on the other side.

The woodland contains native species such as oak and ash, with a few planted wild cherry, sweet chestnut and hornbeam.

There is a series of small waterfalls on the brook, which is bounded by grassland managed without the use of fertilisers and pesticides.

Dozens of species of flowers grow among the grasses as a result - even when nothing is actually in bloom you can see many different types of leaf among the grasses.

Whitbourne consists of the old village (a delightful place) and a more modern part which is called Meadow Green by Ordnance Survey, though not necessarily by anyone else.

You won't find the name on any road sign, but it's where the walk starts.

Fortunately, it's easily recognisable by its pub, school, shop, phone box, bus stop and village hall. In fact, all of Whitbourne's facilities are here, except the church.

Directions

Walk up the Tedstone lane, with the school on your left. Join the first footpath on the right and cross a field, bearing slightly left to the far side. Keep left through two more fields then cut across the corner of a garden to a lane. Turn right.

Walk to a crossroads by Whitbourne Brook and turn left towards Clifton. After about 600m you will see the access point for the stewardship site.

Go past a barn, and along a track into an orchard. Walk around the edge, eventually descending to cross Whitbourne Brook at a ford.

Go up to the top right corner of a sloping pasture to enter a wood, and walk steeply uphill. When you come to a waymark (pointing back the way you've come) turn left on a path which climbs very gently to the top edge of the wood, where it turns left again, soon descending steeply.

Return to the pasture and turn left to find a point where you can step over the brook. Turn right on the other side, bearing slightly away from the brook to go through a gate into another pasture. Then follow the brook as far as you can before walking up to a gate and along the edge of a field to return to the lane near the barn.

Turn right, then eventually left towards Woodhall Farm. The lane passes the farm and becomes a bridleway, turning right past another house. After a further 500m the bridleway goes through a gate into a field.

As you follow the bridleway downhill, look up towards Tedstone Delamere (the house and church on a hilltop to the right) and you should see red deer grazing in the fields.

The bridleway continues along the edge of a young wood then down through an ancient wood (to your right is possibly the biggest oak tree you've ever seen). When it reaches the valley floor it crosses Sapey Brook at a ford.

However, there's also a nearby footbridge, accessed by a small gate.

Having crossed the footbridge, turn right. Just before you meet a very well-defined track, turn left to rejoin the bridleway.

It's easily missed, especially as the waymark post lies in a ditch, but you will see another post further up the slope.

Soon after passing the waymark post, the bridleway goes to the left and climbs to a house, Pixhill. Walk past it and along its access track to meet a lane. Turn left.

At Badley Wood Common, take a path bearing left, cutting a green swathe through the bracken. Cross a surfaced track and continue opposite.

Turn right when you meet a track, and right again at a T-junction, on a wide grassy path. Turn left after a few paces on a narrow path which leads to Linceter Brook. Turn left.

Cross the brook at a wooden footbridge in the corner of the common, then cross a stone footbridge in a meadow and turn left.

Follow the brook to a lane. Turn right, then take a path on the left.

Walk beside Sapey Brook through three fields. In the third field, turn right over a stile at the far side then go up to the top corner of the next field, and then along the remains of an old green lane to the top corner of an orchard.

Turn left along the green lane until a stile gives access to a path through Poswick Lodge Farm. Go through the farmyard and keep left through orchard and pasture, then just keep straight on along field edges to Whitbourne.

l PLEASE NOTE This walk has been carefully checked and the directions are believed to be accurate at the time of publication. No responsibility is accepted by either the author or publisher for errors or omissions, or for any loss, accident or injury, however caused.