The Walk
Joining the footpath next to the Methodist Chapel on Barff Road, you cross over open fields, which give a winter home to flocks of finches and thrushes. You may also startle pheasants and partridges from alongside your route.
As you approach woods, in spring you will see the woodland floor carpeted with bluebells. Taking the footpath through the wood, look for clumps of primroses and other wild flowers at the side of the path. Jays, goldcrests and members of the tit family may be seen or heard among the pine trees.
Car Dyke
As you go further along the woodland path you will notice, on your left, the different stages of coppicing. Stop and listen for a while, for here, in early summer, you may hear the nightingale sing, along with blackcaps and other warblers. In early evening, woodcock fly over the wood. Look out for the pollarded oak, which defines the ancient path through the wood. The walk then follows the Car Dyke alongside the fenland where harriers, sparrowhawks, kestrels and barn owls may be sighted.
The Car Dyke, thought to date from Roman times, is 76 miles long stretching from the Witham near Lincoln to just north of Cambridge. Herons fish here and moorhens make their home on the banks.
Car Dyke Bridge
Beside the woods, crops of sugarbeet, potatoes and oilseed rape grow. Turn west over the Car Dyke bridge and follow the road through the woods, where forget-me-not and yellow archangel grow on the verges in spring. Turn south down the farm track past Barff Farm. Barff, a common name in local parishes, means raised ground beside the fen.
Squirrels, foxes rabbits and smaller mammals abound and hares can be seen on the perimeters of the woodland and in the open fields
Nocton Road
In spring, a detour to Neville Wood will give excellent views of bluebells. Return along the farm track through the fields. On reaching Nocton Road, turn north into the village, looking over the church wall as you pass for a possible sighting of woodpecker and spotted flycatcher.
Local Flora
There are many wild flowers to be seen, particularly on the woodland stretch of the walk; bluebells, red campion, primroses, violets, and ladies smock in marshy areas, abound in the spring, and barren strawberry flowers on into early summer.
Yellow archangel, an indication of ancient woodland can be found in spring and summer in the wood near the Car Dyke. Also in summer, buttercups, potentilla, pink centaury and\ yellow St. John's Wort can be seen and purple marsh thistles line the path where it widens out near the coppiced area of the wood. Here also, reeds grow in the ditches and on the track approaching the Car Dyke, and clumps of sedge, on he left, also indicate the existence of ancient woodland.
This ancient woodland ( the original Lincolnshire Lime Woodland going back 2000 years) supports the small leaved lime and a mix of ash, oak, birch, rowan and aspen, and with the odd willow and one wild service tree!
Coppicing is the oldest form of woodland management; the stump is allowed to grow to a certain size, it is then cut and natural regeneration results in the growth of between five and twenty trunks, which are allowed to grow to twenty feet or so and are then harvested for timber.
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