Thornbury Wayfinders

Step Into Spring Walk 2 – Alpaca Walk

By Alan Watts

This was the first moderate level walk of the festival and it took place on Friday 20th Feb 2026.

Twenty walkers took part and at 10.00am we left the Leisure Centre car park to set off through the fields towards the Wolfridge Alpaca Barn. We crossed the field behind the car park and entered Filnore Woods – Thornbury’s community woodland. There’s lots to see in the woods but we were only passing through and couldn’t stop for long. The Jubilee Way passes through the woods on its way from Aust to Old Sodbury and we followed it through the woods to the slope leading out of the woods up to higher ground. This presented a bit of a problem because the path here is narrow, steep uphill and muddy from use by lots of walkers. There were a few tense moments ascending the slope but we all made it with no major problems.

At this point we turned off the Jubilee Way and headed across a field towards Merry Heaven Farm which is now an animal feed mill. We walked along a hedgerow then onto the farm access road for about 50 metres which brought us to the A38.

Caution was needed while crossing this busy road, then when we’d all made it safely over we went over the stile alongside the Telecommunications mast into a field. Last time we were here a flock of sheep was inside an electric fence enclosure in the far corner, but today as we followed the path around the field edge there was no sign of them. This brought us to New Lane which we crossed onto a wide but wet and muddy path. Our original planning for this part of the walk was to continue on this path to the end of Dodsmoor Lane – a lovely wide track leading to Shellards Lane. We checked this lane some days before the walk to find that the recent rain had turned it into a quagmire. Not really surprising in February but inconvenient for our walk. This meant a change in the route so we turned off the wide muddy track and crossed two fields that took us to The Street close to Grove House.

We turned left and followed the road a short distance to a field gate where we went to the right and took a path that led us to the alpaca enclosures. We learnt some interesting facts about alpacas as we walked through their enclosures and made our way to the cafe for a short break and a drink.

After our break we retraced our steps back through the fields to a gate further along The Street and crossed over by Street Farm. We encountered a bit of a problem here as two horses from the nearby stables had decided to stand in front of the kissing gate we needed to go through. I managed to persuade one of them to move a little allowing us to get by but the second one stood its ground and watched us pass by.

After saying goodbye to the horses we carried on across a couple of fields which took us back to the A38. We crossed over with no problems and headed off down a small track near the Ship Inn A38 entrance. Across the Old Gloucester Rd we entered a narrow lane that took us to our final stile into a large field that gave us really lovely views over the Severn and across towards Chepstow.

We walked through the field to a kissing gate then began the final part of our walk. This was tricky as the path was steeply downhill with some very muddy patches. Kind of the opposite to the muddy uphill part of the Jubilee Way at the start. All the walkers took great care going down and all of us made it down safely. The final part was then across the field at the back of the Leisure Centre. This field is often wet and that day was no exception. We then made our way to the car park where we began, and ended the walk.

Despite being a cloudy day with drizzle at times we all enjoyed the walking and met lots of new people.