Seven Wells Hill trail head by road A44.
| Seven Wells Hill from
road A44 Seven Wells Hill |
| Estimated net time | 1-1½ hour | ||
| Difficulty | No difficulties. | ||
| Drinking water | No access to running water. | ||
| GSM coverage | Coverage throughout the route (March 2013). | ||
| Parking | Room for cars along the road by trail head. | ||
| Start height | 280 metres | ||
| Vertical metres | 90 metres for the roundtrip. | ||
| Trip distance | 4.4 km | ||
| GPS-file | X | ||
| Map |
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| Route photo |
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Assume your starting point is Warwick. From junction 15 on road M40 drive road A429 32.3 km south (in the direction of Cirencester). Turn right onto road A44 in the round about, and drive 8.9 km. Turn left in the four-way junction, and park along the road. This is 3.9 km after the eastern exit to "Stow".
Start your hike by following the road south-west for 1.9 km, almost to the top of the road. Turn right onto a field where a stone fence runs perpendicular to the road, and walk 310 metres along the stone fence. The unmarked summit is somewhere here, and a small tree (per 2013) can be seen as a summit marker.
Descend by reversing your ascent route.
The nearest ranked hill from my base in Warwick was Seven Wells Hill, and with much better weather than forecasted I decided to leave work a little before 5pm in order to give myself the chance to hike it before it got dark. I had played safe in the morning, packing all required gear, so I was able to drive straight to trail head from work. But my hopes of getting proper day-light for my entire ascent got a major blow when I got into slow moving traffic out of the technology park, and also partly along the road towards M40. But as soon as I got onto the motorway things were flowing well, and down A429 the traffic was minimal. The only delay was my stop in order to change into hiking clothes, which I didn't want to delay until trail head in case that would be a place with a lot of people. Unfortunately I had one more hick-up, caused by me misinterpreting the map where roads A44 and A424 intersect, and ended up doing a 10 miles de-tour.
When I eventually got to my planned trail head I found the road I intended to walk was partly closed for traffic due to road works, but this actually made parking easier, and would also mean very little traffic along the road. Hence I had a nice and quite walk up to the summit plateau. When I got close to the summit I noticed a stone fence that looked like something I could follow to get very close to the summit, but decided to follow the road onwards in order to avoid potential muddy fields, and also in order to see if there would be any signs for the summit. But no signs showed up along the main road, nor were there any signs on the smaller road I exited onto on the other side of the summit, so when I got to the other end of the stone fence I ended up walking along it from the opposite side of what I could have done a few minutes earlier. This took me to what looked like the highest point, which corresponded well with my pre-recorded GPS way-point.
It wasn't much to be seen from the summit, and as it was starting to get a little dark I quickly took a few photos before continuing along the fence to its other end. From here I returned back to the car, and just managed to get back without having to dig out the head lamp. Then drive back to Warwick, and yet again a Chinese take-away.
My next visit to Warwick will need longer drives if I'm to bag new hills, but probably the days will be "longer" then. Leaving the hills alone is not an option ...