Geograph - photograph every grid square

This bridleway is the diverted route of the original Valley Road, which today would cut right through B&Q on the Castlepoint shopping centre. The route is picked up again a little further along Yeomans Way to our right.

This is photo 18 in a series of 28 views along Valley Road, one of the original routes in this rural part of Bournemouth. It is a public right of way, number K35, with a varied character. The northern part, from Throop Road, is a tarmacked and then gravel lane narrowing to a path onto Yeomans Way, classified as a byway open to all traffic. Its hitherto straight course once continued to the top of Woodbury Avenue near Castle Lane, but it was rerouted when the Hampshire Centre shopping complex was built in the mid-1960s and it now skirts round Castlepoint, the Hampshire Centre's successor, on a modern surface and comes out farther along Woodbury Avenue. This latter half is designated as a public bridleway. See SZ1194 : Strouden: Valley Road has had to be diverted for the previous photo in the series, and SZ1194 : Strouden: bridleway K35 meets Yeomans Way for the next.