BOAT: Rag Copse Lane

Location: Green Drove, Andover, Hampshire SP11, UK
  • Overall Rating: 4
  • Location: Enham Alamein, Hampshire.
  • OS Explorer Map 131, 'Romsey, Andover & Test Valley'.
  • Starting OS Grid Reference: SU372501
  • Starting GPS Co-ordinates: N51 24' 90" W001 46' 80"
  • Finishing OS Grid Reference: SU368513
  • Finishing GPS Co-ordinates: N51 25' 90" W001 47' 40"
  • To see: beech woodland, Devil's Ditch.
  • ALWAYS follow the Greenlane Code!
This pleasant greenlane (which does not seem to have an official name, so if you have local knowledge of this lane let me know so I can update it!) is marked, at its southern end, by a height restriction barrier of 2.1m on the northern side of a country road called Green Drove. On an unrutted, firm surface of earth and gravel and with the undergrowth well maintained, this byway is relatively east to drive.

Paralleling a field boundary initally, the lane soon plunges into Rag Copse and is the better for it. We drove this lane in early May, as the leaves were bursting out of their buds, and the intense green of the beech leaves in this beautiful, open woodland has to bee seen to be believed. Coupled with the milkmaids and bluebells that can be found in abundance here, and one might say it is a Sylvanian paradise! Ok, yes, I am most certainly getting carried away but this otherwise pretty standard lane scores a 4 for its environs.

The lane offers more of the same as it bends first to the west and then gradually back to the north where it ends, via another height barrier, on the A343 just south of the very pleasant Hampshire town of Husrtbourne Tarrant. Take care here: the council have very helpfully erected a chevron sign which blocks your vision of the junction the the left, so eek out onto the A343 until you can see properly.

Part of the Devil's Ditch, an iron age border ditch between Hampshire and Wiltshire, can be fount just to the north of the lane. There's not much to see though.



View Rag Copse Lane in a larger map

No comments:

Post a Comment

Please keep it clean!

Note: only a member of this blog may post a comment.