Marr, High Melton, Mexborough, Old Denaby, Ravenfield, and Maltby

Another local walk today because I had to wait until after nine o'clock to make a phone call and then I had to sort out some business in town and so didn't arrive at the bus station until just before the 09:45 X19 bus departed. I travelled the four miles to Marr; because there's only a pavement at one side of the road in the village I needed to cross over the busy Barnsley Road twice and both times this took several minutes. Whilst having to wait I did pick up a fifty pence piece that someone must have dropped though...but then a few minutes later I received my first verbal abuse of the week from someone in a passing van.

I headed south for Melton Wood Country Park and then High Melton.

I continued down the hill to the Pastures Road area of Mexborough, crossing over the canal, the river, and the railway before reaching Old Denaby and then climbing up and over the hill and passing just to the west of Hooton Roberts.

There was then quite a long section of road until I reached the church at Ravenfield, beautifully located on the edge of the village in a woodland area next to the fields.

I always enjoy walking across Ravenfield Common, although the views were a bit murky today and so I've not included any photographs. Another section of roadwalking followed, heading east back inside the boundaries of Doncaster Borough, reaching Fordoles Lane and the track that goes to the trig point which marks the highest point in the borough at 144 metres, or 472 foot above mean sea level. There's nothing there to see; it's just a small concrete pyramid of standard design in the middle of a wheat field. Because the crop hadn't been harvested yet I couldn't actually walk right up to the structure and touch it...but it looked like several people must have because the crop was flattened. I wasn't disappointed by what I found at this location, I already knew what to expect by having looked at images online...in fact the approach from the north was actually quite interesting and better than I thought by studying the OS map, with wide ranging views from only a few hundred yards away from where the trig point is. 

The footpath comes out onto the housing estate at the northern end of Maltby; a bus was trundling up the hill towards me and I saw that the bus stop wasn't too far away so I made a run for it, sticking my arm out all the time. The bus overtook me, but the driver did stop and wait a few seconds for me.