Harlestone to Brampton Valley Way at Kelmarsh Station

I sometimes start my description of a day's walk by saying that the walk was outstanding or that it was better than expected. Today's walk won't get either of those accolades; the first five miles were irritatingly meandering whilst the remainder of the walk, along a disused railway line, was a bit boring. However, the countryside was attractive and there were a couple of pleasant surprises - and the Northamptonshire villages, including those seen from our drives to and from the start and finish, were delightful, with lovely mellow sandstone buildings. My route to the end point of our walk also took me over  Pitsford Water, which is only a few miles to the north of Northampton, but could be in the middle of nowhere.

I was travelling from Milton Keynes, having spent the night there on my way home from a week with our daughter, son-on-law and grandson in Wiltshire, whilst Richard was coming from Norfolk. We managed a reasonably co-ordinated arrival time in the car park for the Brampton Valley Way in the former Kelmarsh Station (SP747805), just north of the A14, then drove back to the car park we'd used last week, at SP702466 near Harlestone Church. Apple Maps gave us a surprise when, four or five miles before our destination, it told us that we would arrive in X miles, with no intermediate instructions. Of course the app is rather good at missing road crossings and we actually had to drive straight across the A5199 in Chapel Brampton and straight across the A428 near Harlestone, but neither of the main roads were too busy and it was a very good route. There was a sign up in the car park telling us that there was a wedding at 3pm, but it was still only 10.40am, and we reckoned that the wedding would be finished by the time we got here. For now, we needed to leave the beautiful buildings near the car park behind (the photo shows the stable block) and start walking.

Our route, as recommended by the guidebook, took the more easterly of the options to the A428. This took us past some thatched cottages near the village School then over a ford before climbing up to the road. We turned right onto the A428 for a short distance, though the Midshires Way turning off it is after the Northamptonshire Round turning. The Midshires Way heads onto Harlestone Heath, where it meanders...At one point a sign gave the name as Harlestone Firs and explained that we were on Spencer family land (Althorp is just a few miles to the west). The signposting wasn't great and at one point the route shown on the map would have taken us across a rather overgrown area; fortunately there was a clear alternative around the edge, close to a golf course. 

We continued straight ahead on Pitsford Road and after about half a mile we reached Brampton Halt, now a pub in the former Brampton Station building. We were joining the Brampton Valley Way here, but our route would initially be alongside a functional heritage railway, the Northampton and Lamport Railway.  We were delighted to discover that, in preparation for the forthcoming bank holiday  gala weekend, one of the engines was in steam and another (diesel) engine was in the process of shunting some carriages. A little research on our return home led to the amusing discovery that the engine that was in steam was actually on loan from Bressingham Steam Museum, in Norfolk!

We stopped for lunch at the first bench we encountered on the Brampton Valley Way, just north of the station, and from here it was very straightforward walking for the next seven and a half miles.  There were attractive views of the rolling Northamptonshire countryside from time to time, but for much of the time the views were constrained by the (very attractive) trees either side of the line.  The Northamptonshire Round crossed our route at  "Merry Tom Crossing" (named after a Spencer family horse) and a mile or so further north we noticed first (to our left) the spire of Spratton Church and then (to our right) the spire of Brixworth Church, which is, apparently, architecturally famous e.g. "perhaps the most imposing architectural memorial of the 7th century yet surviving north of the Alps" (Alfred Clapman, courtesy of Wikipedia).

We passed occasional walkers going in the other direction, and were passed by cyclists going both ways; these were sometimes a bit of a nuisance, but not as much so as is sometimes the case on this sort of path.  There were frequent benches, some constructed in a characteristic style, such as the Manor Seat (shown right) near Lamport. There were also occasional remains from the former Northampton to Market Harborough Railway line, which ran along this route, such as a footbridge (now minus its steps) between Maidwell and Draughton. There are reasonably frequent car parks, and we had contemplated parking at Draughton crossing before deciding to stop a couple of miles further north. We therefore continued, passing under the A14 ,

We were now approaching Kelmarsh Tunnel, the first (and longer, at 500 metres) of two tunnels on the Brampton Valley Way that we would need to walk through. I was not looking forward to this; my night-time vision is not great, so I don't usually enjoy walking in the dark, and I was worried that cyclists might not see us. However, I have to admit that the walk through the tunnel was the day's second unexpected pleasure; it was fun, a bit of an adventure and the one cyclist who passed us in the tunnel had very effective lights. The only real issue was that the map trace failed to start recording again after the tunnel, so the map shown below has been constructed from two separate traces plus a hand-drawn line through the tunnel. 

The Brampton Valley Way seemed to take on a nicer character after the tunnel, with attractive wildflowers. The views back to the hill that we had crossed under were also good, though irritatingly unphotographable.  We soon crossed the Kelmarsh to Arthingworth road and reaching the path down to the former Kelmarsh Station where our car was parked. The wedding was indeed well over by the time we got back to Harlestone and our journey, all the way back to Norfolk through the Friday rush hour, was surprisingly trouble-free. Maybe everyone is driving at different times of day in this peculiar year when everyone is desperate to get on holiday, but most people are staying in the UK.

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