St Neots to Godmanchester
Walked by Sally and Richard, Sunday 9th August 2015.
About 11 miles of walking (5 hours including stops), 10.5 miles on the Ouse Valley Way.
Click here for all our photos from this walk.
The weather forecast for today had been gradually improving: initially it had been for cloud with a slight possibility of rain; then sunshine until mid morning followed by cloud; we actually got sunshine virtually all the time we were walking with just half an hour or so around lunchtime when it clouded over a bit. That had pros and cons: it was slightly too warm for comfortable walking (though not hot by the standards of our walks on Offa's Dyke and the Ridgeway) but it is always nicer to walk under blue skies, and as last week we had attractive dragonflies for company. It was a very pleasant walk: we were alongside the river most of the time, with quite a lot of boating activity, and we passed flooded and now very attractive gravel pits; archetypal Ouse Valley walking, but not as varied as some other legs.
We drove by way of Earith and St Ives (both of which we will walk through on subsequent legs) and Huntington (which the path doesn’t go through, although the river does). The OS map doesn’t mark a car park in Godmanchester, though there is one, so we parked one car in the long stay car park on the edge of Huntingdon, almost underneath the A14 (TL245714). Then we drove by way of Offord Cluny, Offord D’Arcy and Great Paxton to the Riverside car park in St Neots (TL178602) where we had parked last week. As last week, we started walking around 9.50am.
We crossed the bridge towards St Neots town centre, then meandered our way along alleyways, roads and the Waitrose car park (the path is not next to the river here, apparently to avoid a marina). We were (OK, I was…) most excited by a couple of attractive Ouse Valley Way signs, so I took a photograph of one of them on the wall of a private house; the owner looked at me as if I was mad and she was probably right - we passed very many similar signs today.
We reached the edge of a common, with the route across it not entirely clear, but we worked it out without too much difficulty and walked around the end of Lammas Meadow (initially being glared at some cows), and so to the river. There were some distinctly des res houses on the opposite bank and various boating activity on the river. Lammas Meadow is a lovely open area, a classic common. We reached a wooded area at the far side and headed away from the river again, crossing Lammas Common and then Islands Common.
We reached the road to Little Paxton and turned left across the river, which obviously floods here from time to time; there were modern houses with just car parking and access on the ground floor. We passed first a weir and then (on the other side of the river) a lock which was being operated manually by a man from the Environment Agency because of some problem with the automatic mechanism. We turned right onto an alleyway, then passed modern houses on the edge of Little Paxton.
This brought us to an entrance to the Paxton Pits Nature Reserve, busy with dog walkers. We chatted to a woman out with three little dogs, one of which couldn’t walk very far; she had a rather neat dog carrier on wheels, and when we saw her again as we walked past the lakes, her dogs were all swimming - really and truly they were out for a dog swim not a dog walk! The lakes were lovely and we caught sight of something blue in the trees. We couldn’t be sure at the time, but zooming in on a photograph when we got home confirmed that this was a beautiful kingfisher.
The Nature Reserve isn’t just lakes and river – we passed some lovely highland cattle and a wind pump, then found ourselves on the original section of the Ouse Valley Way. We ignored signs to the visitor centre to the west, then we left the Paxton Pits Nature Reserve and passed the corner of a bigger lake. There were several family groups out on bikes and we also passed a group of walkers, fortunately sitting down for a break so easier to pass!
We followed a footpath alongside the river for a couple of kilometres, with trains whizzing along the East Coast Main Line on the other side of the river. We managed photos of both Offord D’Arcy and Offord Cluny churches with trains passing in front, then turned away from the river to get across the various waterways near a mill. We had passed quite a lot of benches, but none just here, so we stopped for lunch sitting on our waterproofs. We then continued to Buckden Marina and walked through a ‘village’ of lodges. Eventually we were back on a quiet riverside path, though now there was quite a lot of boating activity on the river.
We left the river near Brampton Lock and Weir, and stopped for an apple at a picnic site, then we walked around the Willows Caravan Park and onto Bromholme Lane. This took us under the railway and onto Portholme (also known as Cromwell’s Acres), reputedly the largest meadow in England. At the far side of the meadow, we passed another lock and walked through bustling parkland towards the centre of the attractive little town of Godmanchester.
We reached the ‘Chinese Bridge’, with swans conveniently positioned underneath it for a photograph; Richard pointed out that this was because they were being fed scraps by people standing on the bridge! The official route of the Ouse Valley Way doesn’t cross the Chinese Bridge, but we had spotted an ice cream van on the other side, so we did. After eating our ice creams (a tub for me because I am in the middle of a course of dental treatment) we re-crossed the Chinese Bridge and followed the mill stream to the site of a former mill, then we cut through to the road up to Huntingdon and followed this back to the car.
Although we don’t know Huntingdon at all, we have various family links to the area, and because we were back at the car before 3pm, we decided to explore one of them on a circuitous route back to the other car in St Neots. We drove out to the village of Easton, five or six miles west of Huntingdon. Despite the fact that I hadn’t been here since I was a child, I remembered the location of the pretty little thatched Carrock Cottage, which used to be owned by my Uncle Bill (my father’s brother); actually I think Aunty Eileen may still be there, I need to do some research. Rather than returning to St Neots by way of the A14 and A1, we took the scenic route along country lanes. Going out for a drive on country lanes in Cheshire, with me as map-reader, was one of my Dad’s great pleasures, so the whole experience was a delightful trip down memory lane.