Faced with the prospect of a showery day I decided to give the bicycle a rest and travel just a few miles up the road to have a look at Beacon Hill Conservation Park. Beacon Hill Conservation Park lies to the north-east of Newark-on-Trent and is bordered by both residential and industrial areas. The site was formerly a gypsum mine and was acquired from British Gypsum in 2001, with a substantial endowment for future management. The site covers an area of 19.4 hectares and has an extensive network of habitats of significant wildlife value including scrub, woodland, hedgerows and grassland. The large central area of the reserve was previously a landfill site. 
So what do I think then? First of all it’s not that easy to find if you don’t know where it is. I found myself parking half way down the main Beacon Hill Road and asking directions from an old chap who was putting a sign on his hedge advertising potatoes for sale. It turned out I was a quarter of a mile too close to town, but I had started to walk up the hill anyway so continued. The great thing about this was it allowed me to look at the array of different houses built along the main road. The majority of them set back, some no longer accessible by car due to overgrown driveways and all from different years and in contrasting styles.
On finding the Conservation Park some way further up beyond the crest of the hill on my left I was a little disappointed at first. The sign was overgrown, the entrance uninspiring and just a few feet in there were diggers and lorries undertaking some fairly serious looking civil engineering project.
I walked along the path, which had some scrub to the left and an overgrown meadow to the right and was on the verge of turning back when the path took a left turn and became more interesting. 
The path wound on then through a mixture of trees and meadow, slightly undulating and broadened out in to another meadow. Either side of the main path small trails lead off in to the scrub, some clearly in use by mountain bikers. I circled around the meadow and took another path off to the right, which brought me out on Beacon Hill near my car.
Although early in the year there were some wild flowers to see the leaves on the trees had that freshness they have so early in the year.
The problem with Beacon Hill Conservation Park is its proximity to the A1 and Newark Industrial Estate.
On no part of the site can you escape the noise from the four-lane highway less than a mile away and it seems the closest unit on the Industrial Estate is a metal reclamation yard. It might have been that I visited on a Tuesday mid morning and on a Sunday it might all be more serene. 
I have promised myself to return in summer on a weekend to see what the meadows have to offer by way of flowers and see if it’s any more tranquil.
