Geograph - photograph every grid square

This bridleway through Brook Plantation is on the line of a former tramway, built to carry coal to the Nutbrook Canal. The tramway was a single-track plateway, in which smooth-wheeled wagons run on flanged rails or plates. It was probably built and operated in a similar manner to the better-known Little Eaton Gangway. It went out of use when the collieries closed, some time around 1875. Brook Plantation seems to have grown up on a pair of colliery spoil heaps that straddled the route. The name "Blue Fly" comes from a pumping engine at a colliery at the west end of the line.