Rotary Wood Walk, Ollerton

Due to the closure of Ashmore’s Jim arranged for a walk through Rotary Wood at Ollerton with a meal at the Alders pub adjacent to the roundabout. 8 members attend starting in the pub car park at 4.30pm. The walk traversed the Sherwood Heath SSSI which is a very rare lowland heath with many species of flora and fauna specific to this landscape. It then went through an area know as Cockglode Wood being the remnants of the gardens of Cockglode House built in the 19th century but demolished in the 1950s to make way for the spoil heaps for Thorseby Colliery the last deep coal mine to close in Britain just a few years ago. We then ascended the spoil heap of which 25acres had been planted by Rotary as a Millenium project for the District and which received the RIBI award for Environmental projects in 2003 following a visit from the President who unveiled the plinth at the summit topped with a plate engraved with the Rotary wheel and marking the direction of several locations such as Southwell. Non of these are now visible as the 25cm trees are now up to 10 m high. Special among these is a Sherwood Oak planted by the Sherrif of Nottingham in 2000. Several members of the Club did some of the planting in 1997/8 and Jim was very involved throughout including the raising of the £58,000 for the project. The Wood is now linked to the rest of the spoil heap that is being restored as a country park covering over 1000 acres and makes a very interesting walk. Following the walk we had a meal at the Alders pub that was interesting as they had run out of the special beers, the carvery looked at least 2 days old and they had run out of eggs to go with the gammon steak however we all found something on the menu that was good and we all had an enjoyable evening.     JG