It turned out that's because someone has helpfully removed the entire footway beyond the spa! They didn't have any signage to say this though, so I walked along the now dirt verge towards the solar farm junction. Turned out that they hadn't planned on this, so there was no access to the junction.
I turned back home. After crossing A422/A46 roundabout site, I noticed on the opposite side of the road the base of a continuation of the new shared foot/cycle way I'd had to cross over to use earlier.
Made me wonder: did the planners have the foresight to join it up to the existing section?
Interestingly the construction folk at least seemed to be under the impression that the existing footway alongside the A422 was already a shared use cycle path too. I wish someone had actually put signs up because I could have previously cycled to the solar farm!
It appears that this new foot/cycleway is going to have a branch off into the planned "mixed use" commercial development which is still at the moment a grassy field. There's this stub jutting off sideways, more or less where the unopened and now replaced foot/cycleway petered out before.
Which meant that first I had to do hopscotch over the A422/A46 as they'd closed some of the footway, and directed pedestrians over to part of a new shared foot/cycleway. Which itself appears to have been built on top of the shared foot/cycleway they built a few years ago and never opened
What I'd forgotten was that the A422/A46 is having not one but two new roundabouts installed. One for the bypass round the back of Anne Hathaways (part of which I regularly walk along already) and one to replace the T-junction to Drayton Manor Farm, the industrial units and the solar farm.
During the Pandemic, I often walked away from town to socially distance by myself around the local solar farm, as its peaceful and there's often deer to watch. Its a lovely evening and I was full of pizza, so I decided to walk off the carbs with a stroll up the hill to see it again.
Just looking at one of the posters in our local climate hub and was surprised to read that there's less CO2e per mile output from a half full electric bus than a push bike pedalled by a veggie.
When I got to Wildmoor Spa, I was rather surprised to find that the drop kerbs on the footway crossing the entrance had been replaced with normal kerbs!