Thornbury Wayfinders

1 Yate Court and Common 15.6 K or 10 miles

This route uses a small section of the Frome Valley Walkway and the central part of the Jubilee Way to create a Slow Way linking Chipping Sodbury and Thornbury.

To get to the start, you used to be able to take the number 622 bus from Rock Street in Thornbury to The Clock in Chipping Sodbury High Street. Now you need to book a ride on a West Link minibus.

1. From the bus stop turn left down Wickwar Road and then left again on the Frome Valley Walkway just after the church of St John the Baptist.
2. Continue along the Frome Valley Walkway until you emerge on a road. Turn right and right again across a bridge over the River Frome. Go past the entrance to a small park and turn left along Brook Street.
3. At the end, go straight ahead past the entrance to the old quarry onto the cycle path through the Ridge Wood Nature Reserve.
4. Follow the tarmac road through the woods. When it bends up the hill to the right, turn left onto the track along the backs of the houses. Just before this track goes out of the woods onto Greenways Road, a dog poo bin signals that it is time to follow a rough path up the hill to the fence around the quarry compound. Turn left alongside the fence.
5. When you come out at the top of Peg Hill, turn left and left again into Love Lane and follow it around the cycle park to come out on Peg Hill again.
6. Use the pedestrian lights to cross the road.
7. Turn right and cross Clayhill Drive. Turn left on the pavement and then right to access a yellowish path up the grass. Keep right at a junction, then right again after some play equipment to find a kissing gate onto a minor road.
8. Turn left and follow the road around a double bend, then take the first turn on the left, which leads down to Yate Rocks.
9. At the bottom of the hill, cross the ford (or footbridge) over the Ladden Brook and look for a kissing gate on the left. In the field follow the path alongside the brook. 
10. After a bend, cross a footbridge over the brook and turn right. Follow the path parallel to the Ladden Brook until you reach a kissing gate. Follow the path around the southern end of the Tanhouse Lane Fishing Lake until you are directed across a field to another kissing gate. Turn right alongside the hedge on your right to emerge on Tanhouse Lane.
11. Go straight across the lane to a kissing gate beside a field gate. Follow the path across the field to a metal footbridge over the brook but do not go over it. Instead, follow the conservation headland alongside the hedge to the left.
12. In the corner of the field is a kissing gate leading through some scrub into another field. Follow the path across the field to a mini-gate into a paddock. (Mind your shins.)  Keep going on the same line to a pair of kissing gates onto Yate Court Lane. 
13. Yate Court up the drive to the right was built during the thirteenth century (licence to crenellate in 1299) and was refurbished by the Berkeleys in the sixteenth. It was occupied by Parliamentary forces in 1644 and its defences were destroyed when they left. There is not much left. The Berkeleys removed the gatehouse between the World Wars and had it erected as a new entrance to Berkeley Castle to avoid having to drive through the town.(The following route has some issues, which can be overcome by following the lane to the left and turning right on the road at the end.)
14. Cross the lane to a wooden field gate and follow the edge of the wood on the left to the end of the field, where there is a kissing gate leading to an enclosed path. Here you are leaving the former deer park. (This path has some low branches and indeed trunks, and you have to go into and out of a ditch, which is probably muddy. Nettles are also occasionally a problem.)
15. At the end is a stile leading into a large field. The path goes past an isolated tree to a finger post at which you need to turn left to a steel stile, followed by a more conventional stile. Follow the right hand hedge to another steel stile onto the beginning of a drive.
16. Turn right and follow the road up to and over the railway bridge. Go straight on at the following crossroads and turn left after about 200m over a footbridge and through a kissing gate. Follow the hedge across the field to emerge on another lane and turn right.

Yate Common: The house on the left “incredible as it may appear” was the base for “numerous bandits with the necessary appurtenances of romance” who “for more than 7 years have been the terror of the Neighbourhood, according to a contemporary news report. The original house was occupied by an elderly couple called Job and Unity Mills. Their kitchen concealed “a subterraneous cave, the entrance to which was behind the fireplace, where the soot and a large pot effectually prevented the slightest suspicion, and in there the officers found 20 sides of bacon, quantities of cloth, wheat, barley, oats, malt, cheese, two bedsteads and £50, chiefly in half crowns.”

The gang, which ran an effective protection racket, had around 40 members, 31 of which were apprehended when the Reverend Thomas Cook, Rector of St Mary’s Church in Wickwar and local magistrate was alerted by his verger, who was a gang member. And raised a posse.

Thomas Mills, one of the Old Mills’ sons, turned King’s Evidence and shopped the rest of the gang, He remained in the district and was widely mocked. 

His brother, William Mills and one Thomas Gardiner were hanged at Gloucester Gaol and another brother John Mills was exiled to Australia, where he became a brewer. The Old Millses and a younger brother got off as part of the deal.

Subsequently, the Dyer brothers, Mark and John, fired shots at the Mills family home in revenge. They were arrested and hanged. The King’s evidence system was pretty much all the authorities had to deal with crimes of this kind and it needed to be defended with stern measures.

17. Go past some farm buildings through a gate into a field and follow the right hand hedge until you emerge into a green lane. Turn left.

18. Follow the green lane for about 600m until you come to a kissing gate on the left. In the field, bear right to another gate into the next field and bear right to another kissing gate. Go straight ahead through another two gates to enter a piece of Millennium Woodland. 

19. Follow the left hand hedge to the end and turn left and then right down an enclosed path to emerge on the main road. Turn left to go to the Rose and Crown public house.

20. From the Rose and Crown, cross the main road and follow the right fork of Church Lane, which will take you past Rangeworthy Primary School, the entrance to Rangeworthy Court Country Hotel and a church dedicated to the Holy Trinity. There is a gate out of the small church car park, which leads into a field.

21. Follow the wall on your right through a gate into the next field. Continue past the business end of the farm buildings and follow the track. Which is just to the left of straight ahead, down the hill to a gate. In the next field, follow the right hand hedge to a gate into another field. Turn left and proceed with the hedge on your left to the far end, where there is a stile into another field. Continue with the hedge now on your right.

22. This leads to a gated footbridge over the Ladden Brook.

23. As the next three fields are usually down to arable, it is usually simplest to turn left and then right alongside the mineral railway. When you come to an underbridge beneath it, turn right on the track away from the railway until you come to a footpath sign on the left. The path across the field is usually hard to follow, but it goes quite close to the farm buildings and now comes out through a kissing gate onto a new road, called Walnut Field. Turn left and follow the road to a new path through to the Village Shop, the Village Hall and the Swan Inn. 

24. Turn up West Street, which is opposite the entrance to the pub car park and is marked by a red telephone box. 

The Midland Railway: On the way you pass under a railway bridge. This now carries a mineral railway that carries stone from the Grovesend Quarries. There used to be a branch line that served the quarries behind the church. There used to be a level crossing on the road to Thornbury. Originally the line carried passengers nearly as far as Daggs Allotments in Thornbury, but it is no longer possible to get a train under the A38.

25. Follow the road past the farm on the left to emerge through a gate into a field. Follow the hedge on your left up to the top and turn left through a kissing gate. 

26. Continue through three field boundaries until you emerge on a lane. 

27. When you come out onto Itchington Road, turn right and follow the lane under the motorway. Go past the first turning on the left then take the track straight ahead through a kissing gate when the road bends to the right. 

28. Go straight ahead through two Bristol gates and a gap next to a redundant stile until you come out through a kissing gate onto a green lane. Continue on uphill until you come to the A38.

29. Cross the A38 carefully into the lane opposite. Continue across the A38 into Abbey Lane and keep going till you reach a right angle bend to the left. 

Here the route leaves the Jubilee Way.

30. Go straight ahead to a kissing gate and head down the field to another on a hedge corner next to a field gate. Head down the field to a kissing gate in the diagonally opposite corner. Head past a field gate to another kissing gate at the top of some steps down to Midland Way.

31. Cross the road to an enclosed path. At the end follow a path up onto the Railway Path. 

This is the former Midland Railway, which used to serve Thornbury. The nearby railway bridge was built wide enough to accommodate a two track railway, but the embankment was never made wide enough to take more than one track.

32. Turn left and follow it till you emerge on Midland Way. Cross at the pedestrian refuge and turn right.

33. Cross Cooper Road and take the path between the Essilor works and the bank. Turn right at the end through the old railway tunnel, which brings you out onto Streamleaze. 

34. Turn right and then left into a cul-de-sac called Tyndale View. Take the path on the left at the end, which leads through to an area with some garages. Go across to the opposite corner, where the road leads past the Thornbury Community Garden. Turn right down the one way street, (You ought to be able to cut the corner through the garden, but they don’t always unlock both gates!)

35. At the other end of the road  turn left into Bath Road. On your right is Rock Street long stay car park. On the left is a raised garden with an interpretation panel, which explains Tyndale View.

36. At the top of the road is Rock Street, where you caught the bus..