FOR my walk this week into the Living World I planned a circular stroll from Hurst Green between Whalley and Longridge and in the glorious Ribble Valley.

My walk began from the Lower Hodder Bridge (the Hodder is a lovely tributary of the Ribble) where I watched a brown hawker dragonfly catching flies which they catch by linking their legs to make a sort of net.

Whatever invention human beings come up with it always seems to me that nature was there first!

In the Hodder Woods a group of boys were testing the horse chestnut trees. They were looking to see if the conkers were ripe enough to practice the game which is centuries old. The old and more accurate name was 'conquerors'.

From the next bridge over the river I turned left and climbed a hill to an area known as Kemple End. There is a car park which looks so flat that a building could have been constructed on it. From the17th century this had been the case because the Shireburne Alms Houses were here until 1947.

My walk continued to Stoneyhurst School which has been run by the Jesuit fathers since the 18th century. Before that Stoneyhurst was the mansion of the Shireburne family. It was they who provided the alms houses. By the 1940s the school was expanding and the alms houses were falling down. The building was removed stone by stone and rebuilt near the school in the village of Hurst Green.

I took my time over the two miles to Stoneyhurst and soaked up the wonderful natural history of the area. A well made winding road leads around the school which has two lakes set around it. Here I found lots of wildfowl including mallards and Canada geese.

They are resident between October and April and there are many wintering wildfowl which make Stoneyhurst their cold weather home.

On I went passing Stoneyhurst and then through Hurst Green. The alms houses look as if they had not been disturbed since Tudor times.

A left turn through the village then returned me to Lower Hodder Bridge. This is a longer walk than I usually attempt, but there is so much to see that I take all day over it. I have an early packed lunch in Hodder Woods and a snack at Hurst Green at either of the pubs or the splendid little cafe which sells ice cream and good butties.

Converted for the new archive on 14 July 2000. Some images and formatting may have been lost in the conversion.