Loughborough Big Meadow is the ideal spot for a gentle wander through a beautiful, peaceful meadow. The ideal time to visit is in the late spring, when you’ll be able to hear skylarks singing overhead and admire the array of wildflowers on display. Great burnet, meadow saxifrage, yellow rattle, common birds-foot-trefoil and pepper saxifrage all make their home here. The meadows are the only known site in the county today for the nationally scarce narrow-leaved water-dropwort. As you walk along the river, you might be able to hear sedge warbler, whitethroat and reed bunting, which will spend the summer here. Most of the meadow is mown for hay during June or July, before we graze the area in the late summer and autumn.
This is one of the few ‘Lammas meadows’ left in England. These are areas of common land dating back to medieval times. Dole stones (marker posts) were used to define ownership of strips of the meadow that were opened for grazing on Lammas Day. This has been August 1 since 1752. The amount of land someone owned on the meadow defined how many animals they were allowed to graze.
The reserve lies alongside the River Soar and Meadow Lane between Loughborough and Stanford on Soar. It consists of a number of unmarked plots in the centre of the meadows. Access is via a stile near the River Soar entrance.
At the published co-ordinates you will find a 'little bridge' while at this location find the following in order to relpace letters with numbers.
52° 4D.19B
001°AA.CDB
AA- numbers of letters in the word starting with T on the circles.
B- total number of circles with rivets on the bridge
C- number of rivets in one of the circles.
D- number of letters in the word/location starting with N on the circles.
Now re-locate to find the cache.
The Little Bridges series was started by Stanthews in 2009 to highlight small footbridges in remote parts of Wiltshire. Since then the series has been expanded by others all over the country and starting to spread fast, Damian from Winter Foxes has created and updates a list of cachers who has found 10 or more little bridges and can be found here, if you would like to add to the series, please contact Stan on stanthews@aol.com and he will give you a number for your bridge, to qualify, the bridge must be a foot bridge too small for vehicles, please make sure your title exactly matches “Little Bridges # xx then name” including spaces so it will get picked up and added to Damian’s list.
