To Oundle from Barnwell
Walked by Sally and Richard, 5th July 2020
5.8 miles (2.5 hours including break for lunch), about 4.7 miles progress on route of Nene Way
Our photographs taken on this walk are here
Yesterday's delightful walk had explored some of the historic villages and towns of Northamptonshire. Today's walk added in the lovely village of Barnwell, but was predominantly about the River Nene itself. With the benefit of hindsight, it is difficult to understand why we had been so fixed in our idea of the Nene Way being a route best walked in winter; it's hard to think of a more quintessentially English summer walk than this one, along a meandering river bordered by lush vegetation with colourful dragonflies and butterflies for company. The horrors of the Coronavirus pandemic seemed a million miles away (sadly they are not...).
We weren't sure how easy parking would be in Barnwell, so we decided to walk this leg in reverse, meeting up in a different long stay car park in Oundle (at TL045883, near the Joan Strong Centre off East Road) to avoid retracing our steps out to the west of the town. When we arrived after a straightforward drive from Milton Keynes, we had the car park completely to ourselves. We drove on to Barnwell in one car and found a parking place near the old school and Parson Latham's Hospital (almshouses) and opposite St Andrew's Church (TL049849). From here it was just a short distance, across the bridge over the stream that runs through the centre of the village. to the route of the Nene Way in front of the Montagu Arms. We turned left (north) and followed the lane past attractive stone houses, with plenty of thatch, a little hump-backed bridge, and views back to the Church. We passed Barnwell Manor and the remains of Barnwell Castle and headed out of the village, then took a track which led us across the main A605 then to the B road which runs south from Oundle to join with the A605.
The next stretch of the walk was along the pavement of this road; not wonderfully exciting, though there were good views to the spire of St Peter's Church in Oundle and it didn't take us too long to get to the attractive Oundle Mill (marked as Barnwell Mill on the OS Map), and Barnwell Country Park. Our route did not go through the Country Park (just as well, it was too busy for our liking) but instead took a path with one of the strands of the River Nene to our left, a marina on the other side of the river, and a fishing lake to our right.
We passed a lock and crossed this strand of the river, then another, then another and after walking towards a row of upmarket houses on a hill in front of us, we doubled back across common land and back down to the bank of the river (now to our right). We followed this for a couple of miles, under the A605, and around meanders on a variety of scales. It was delightful, so not surprisingly others were out walking, but we were usually able to keep well apart when passing. We passed someone swimming in the river; this became a reasonably common experience over summer 2020 - possibly it is less risky to swim in a river than to risk Coronavirus at a swimming pool or on a crowded beach - at the time of this walk (the first time this year we saw someone swimming in a river) swimming pools in the UK were still firmly shut! When we reached a broad section of meadow (so as not to get in the way of others) we sat down by the river for a picnic.
We passed a weir and could see a lock in the distance then eventually we reached the point at which we had crossed the river and headed off towards Oundle yesterday. Here we had joined up with our previous leg of the Nene Way so we could have just followed the same route back into Oundle, but when driving into the town from the North, our route had been over the 11-arch North Bridge, and I wanted to take a closer look. so we continued by the river for a while, past cows and passing back under the A605, then cutting across the flood plain to the western extremity of North Bridge. The extension to our route was worthwhile, though the walk back to the car park wasn't very exciting (actually, for a town with such an attractive centre, some of the suburbs are distinctly tatty!). We returned to Barnwell to collect the other car, then I drove home to Norfolk while Richard returned to Milton Keynes to do some painting prior to carpet and flooring fitting during the week.
