Godmanchester to St Ives

I needed to work on Sunday morning, but we decided to head out for a walk after lunch, en route to my overnight stop at the Bedford South Premier Inn. St Ives and Godmanchester are not exactly on the direct route from home, but we stretched a point! We had an early lunch and by soon after 2pm we had parked one car in the long stay car park in St Ives (TL317713) and the other in the little car park at Mill Yard in Godmanchester (TL244708). The route of the Ouse Valley Way was signed down a lane just across the busy B1043 so we were soon on our way. The weather forecast had been for a dry but cloudy afternoon, but actually the sun came out and it turned quite warm.

We walked through the churchyard of Godmanchester Church, then around the edge of a playing field and under the busy A14. We skirted around a lake; there was still a lot of traffic noise, but it was an attractive lake (presumably a flooded gravel pit) with various wildfowl, including the grebe shown in the photograph. As we left the lake behind us, there was a hill to our right that seemed rather odd in this flat landscape, especially since the map indicates a sand and gravel pit in the same place! We realised that we were actually looking at a former land-fill site. We walked across rough ground to a dismantled railway line and turned right along this for a short distance, then turned left around more flooded gravel pits.

The previous paragraph makes the landscape sound rather unattractive; in fact, whilst it is undoubtedly an artificial landscape, it is actually rather pretty and a real haven for wildlife. We were now in the Godmanchester Nature Reserve, walking alongside Cook's Stream around first Island Lake and then Roman Lake, with geese, swans and cows for company.

According to the map, the route of the Ouse Valley Way hugs the bank of Cook's Stream up to its confluence with the River Ouse, but in fact we took a clear path across a field, which reached the river opposite Hartford Marina. Similarly, whilst I suspect the official route goes right by the river, this route was overgrown whilst the path on the ground skirted around the edge of a field of cows.

We returned to the river's edge just before The Rhymers (an inlet) but soon found ourselves back in the field of cows. We took a bridge over another little waterway, and then followed a path close to the inlet, as shown on the map (Ordnance Survey Explorer Sheet 225). We reached a bridge over the inlet, shown as the route of the footpath on the OS map (TL274718). However there were no signs here, and the diamonds on the map are shown (without footpath) further on, so we didn't really know what to do. We decided to take the footpath over the bridge. This brought us to a bridge and weir at the entrance to Four Gate Pit and so back to the river. Further on we noticed that the route that the diamonds follow down to the river was clearly marked as 'private', so it appears that we had found the best route, more by good luck than good management. Ordnance Survey, please note!

After that rather tricky bit of route-finding, the next bit, along the river by Hemingford Meadow was obvious. We joined the busy path from Hemingford Abbots, crossed the river by a weir, and reached Houghton Mill. Houghton Mill is owned by the National Trust, but it was horribly busy and we have visited before so we didn't stop. There was another irritating bit of route-finding here; it later transpired that the 'correct' route is as indicated by the Ouse Valley Way sign opposite the tea room i.e. straight ahead with the car park and the campsite to your left, but this is not what's shown on the map. After a bit of walking around in circles we gave up on Houghton Mill (annoyed with the National Trust and the Ordnance Survey in equal measure) and walked down towards the village, taking a clear footpath opposite the Church. Houghton village is a pretty place, so we were pleased to have done this - all was well in the end.

Our footpath brought us out at the back of the Houghton Mill campsite (rejoining the route shown on the map here) and then to an attractive lane towards St Ives (rejoining the signed route here). There were lots of people about, including two teenage girls on bikes (Hannah and her friend) who were having an argument which involved one of them cycling off in a huff, to be followed by the other, then both stopping for another bout of the argument. We passed them each time they stopped; they passed us each time they cycled on. Oh the joys of being a teenager...There are some distinctly upmarket houses along this lane; I wonder what the residents think to all the people that Houghton Mill's growing popularity has brought.

In order to fully understand the next bit of today's story you need to know that my ultimate boss, the Open University's new Vice Chancellor Peter Horrocks, tells us (quite rightly) of the need to "cut through the thicket". The Thicket on the outskirts of St Ives is actually an attractive belt of woodland.

We continued along Thicket Lane to St Ives and walked through the town, taking a short diversion down Bridge Street to view the river front, then on to Market Hill and St Ives Free Church...

When I had been walking above the route of the River Fleet with my friends Penny and Pam in July, I'd noticed the ornate family tomb of the architect Sir John Soane in the churchyard of Old St Pancras Church. I'd never heard of John Soane, and in looking him up on Wikipedia, I discovered that he sent his grandson Fred to stay with his friend and colleague John Tarring. That attracted my attention, especially when I learnt that John Tarring was from Holberton in Devon; I knew that my father's family, the Flashmans, were from just down the road in Modbury and that my great-grandfather was George Tarring Flashman, the son of another George Flashman and Mary Elizabeth, nee Tarring. Following some non-trivial family history research, Richard discovered that I am indeed related to John Tarring, though not exactly closely - my great-great-great-great-grandfather Robert Tarring was brother to Nicholas, John Tarring's grandfather (whose father, another John Tarring (1707-1771) and his wife Margaret are thus our nearest common ancestors). You may wonder why this suddenly becomes relevant in the middle of St Ives. The answer is that John Tarring the architect designed the Free Church in St Ives (if you wanted a spire on a non-conformist church, it appears that he was your man...) and the photograph shows me in front of the work of my distant relation. Coincidentally, John Tarring also designed Thornton Hall (now Thornton College) which we'd walked past on an earlier leg of the Ouse Valley Way.