Sence Valley

August and early September are dreadfully dreary photographically. At least, I find them so. The season of growth is over, the young have flown and the vegetation dulls.

Couldn't be truer of this view over the Sence Valley near Ibstock. Once the site of an opencast coal mine that produced eight million tonnes of coal between 1982 and 1996. All this vegetation and woodland has been planted since closure of the pit. Leicestershire County Council has paid for the area's rehabilitation into a leisure area where you can watch wildlife and walk the dog, and yourself.

But it wasn't at its best today and it also started raining.

I'd taken a dirt track downhill from the top car park before realising that it was rather steep. I had to sit on one of the many benches at the bottom to recover. But it promises rewards in summer when insects and birds are flying, and, I hope, in Autumn when many of the trees will be revealed in wonderful colours.

The Forestry Commission has planted conifers for harvesting interspersed with deciduous trees. It is a working woodland.

Throughout our time there, popular music of the 1960s and 70s blared out across the valley. A passerby suggested the source was Cattows Farm. Basil and I went investigating after we left the park. A huge windmill and a circus big top and cars parked, but I couldn't find a signed entrance.

Too late to stop anyway and the rain was coming down apace.