Big country's hard to find; AWalkInThePark GRAHAM YOUNG VISITS DICKENS HEATH NATURE RESERVE.

IT WAS December 2007 when I was last here, just in time to catch a glorious winter sunrise. Spurred on by last week's column from Queslett Nature Reserve, I thought I would show my children how this fellow landfill site turned nature reserve was looking in the autumn.

In a word... splendid, assuming you can find it.

There's a walk off Dickens Heath Road which will take you down the other side of the adjacent Stratford-upon-Avon Canal .

Or you can look for Aldershaws in the heart of the new-age settlement itself, then try to find your way in on foot.

Don't expect to see any signposts for the nature reserve, though, since this village still resembles an ongoing hotch-potch of mixed housing styles and tiny roads.

I have an inherent dislike of cul-desacs in general, believing that stagnant pools of water have much to teach us about the dangers of isolation.

So the whole Dickens Heath concept seems deeply flawed to me, compared with conventional villages or the great parts of Birmingham that have stood the test of time.

But, on the plus side, if you walk out into the 2.52-hectare nature reserve, then the sky really does open up.

This is big country, all right, but one where a giant horizontal block of apartments rises in the distance like a monolith from old East Germany.

In the reserve itself, you can walk all the way round a lower-level pool.

A mixture of trees, reeds and hedgerows sensibly stops the site from looking like a simplified park and the varied habitat should do wonders for the wildlife.

Mid-afternoon wasn't the best time to see any unusual birds... we only saw one from a distance and didn't have the chance to identify it.

The total absence of litter was impressive but, this being Britain 2009, there just had to be a couple of dads riding mini go-karts/quad bikes which were making a right old noise on the Braggs Farm side.

Although they were also being ridden by little children wearing crash helmets, newspapers have reported enough serious quad-bike crashes over the years to make you wonder what might happen if a young sibling couldn't get out of the way of a misdirected kart quickly enough.

Let's hope we never find out.

VisitorInfo Dickens Heath Nature Reserve is between the Stratford-upon-Avon Canal and Aldershaws - which borders two more small ponds.

CAPTION(S):

Waste not: Louie Young takes a walk on the wild side in Dickens Heath Nature Reserve, a former landfill site now transformed into an impressively varied natural habitat. Deep end: A water measure in the pond at Dickens Heath Nature Reserve. Take your pick: Madison Young examines the berries in the nature reserve.