UCR: Rope Yarn Lane

• Overall Rating: 3
• Location: Stoke, Hampshire.
• OS Explorer Map 131, 'Romsey, Andover & Test Valley'.
• Starting OS Grid Reference: SU408523
• Starting GPS Co-ordinates: N51 26' 80" W001 41' 70"
• Finishing OS Grid Reference: SU409518
• Finishing GPS Co-ordinates: N51 26' 40" W001 41' 50"
• To see: the 'phone box library' in Stoke (see pic below).
• ALWAYS follow the Greenlane Code!

This pleasant byway is marked solely as a white country road labelled 'track' on the Ordinance Survey map, not as a UCR or anything else. However, it does carry vehicular rights so you are permitted to drive it, although you wouldn't loose any sleep if you didn't drive this short greenlane.

We started from the western end, leaving the 'yellow' country road running north out of Stoke to the east at it's junction at Stoke Hollow. This byway proceeds on a mixed surface of grass and mud, and foliage is a little tight if not restrictively so, so consider it as read that you'll pick up a scratch or two on the paintwork. The greenlane almost immediately heads downhill from it's western end, and more sharply so after passing the barn to the south of the lane. After the barn the foliage closes in a little , and the trail continues downhill, bears to the right, emerges from the undergrown onto a grassy surface between hedgerows and finishes up on Binley Bottom. Very short, and not really worth a look unless you combine it with other byways in the area.

More interesting than the lane itself is the 'phone box library' in the adjacent village of Stoke. Set up for locals, by locals (it's PIN protected), this is probably the best thing I've ever seen a phone box used for and certainly beats the pith out of the Out of Order 'sculpture' in Kingston-upon-Thames!

The phone box library in Stoke.

View Rope Yarn Lane in a larger map