Hereward Way
Walked by Sally and Richard between November 2012 and April 2013
Hereward the Wake lived in the 11th Century and was a leader of fenland opposition to the Norman conquest. Hereward's base was in the Isle of Ely, and according to legend he roamed the fens of what is now north Cambridgeshire, south Lincolnshire and west Norfolk, leading popular opposition to William the Conqueror. Apparently, much of what is 'known' about Hereward is actually legend and his life was romantised by Charles Kingsley's novel Hereward the Wake, published in 1866. Given our previous walking links with Kingsley (he is commemorated by a statue in Bideford, and Westward Ho! is named after another of his novels - see Instow to Westward Ho!), this actually makes the whole thing more interesting for me.
The Hereward Way is a 110-mile walk, officially starting at Oakham (in the tiny county of Rutland) and ending at East Harling Station (Norfolk). It was designed by 'TRN' (thank you, whoever you are) in the 1980s, as a walking route across the fens and also to link the Viking Way to the Peddars Way. It was designed to pass stations every 16 miles or so, which is an excellent idea, although some of the stations don't have what you'd call a frequent service.
We live in West Norfolk, on the 'fen edge' and we are very fond of Ely. So we should perhaps have walked the Hereward Way years ago. However, much as we love the fens, endless walking across this landscape didn't inspire us and we thought that the Hereward Way might have rather a lot of road walking.There was a fair bit of walking acorss the fens, but usually alongside rivers not on open droves, and most of the time the amount of road walking was not a problem. The route is actually incredibly varied, across Breckland, fen and rolling countryside (though no big hills!) and through pretty villages and towns such as March, Whittlesey, Stamford and Oakham..
The missing inspiration to walk the Hereward Way came when we passed the point at which the Hereward Way parts company with the Peddars Way, when were re-walking the Peddars Way in September 2012. The Peddars Way links with the Icknield Way Path and the Icknield Way Path links with the Ridgeway National Trail and the Ridgeway links with the Wessex Ridgeway, and this takes you to Lyme Regis. We have walked from the start of the Peddars' Way to our house and at the time we walked the Hereward Way we were almost up to Lyme Regis on the South West Coast Path. We were aware that when we had completed this lot (!) we would have walked, albeit in wandering fashion and not always in a consistent direction, from our home in Norfolk to the extreme west of the UK at Land's End, and the extreme south at Lizard Point [Link completed May 2014]. I enjoy the feeling of connectiveness that I'm beginning to get as we wander around the UK on long distance footpaths. The Hereward Way offered the potential for some more connections! The Hereward Way links with the Viking Way and the Viking Way links to the Wolds Way and the Wolds Way links to the Cleveland Way, which we had already walked. The Hereward Way also had the advantage of being close to home, so we were able walk it in a series of one day legs and during the winter.
We chose to walk the Hereward Way in reverse i.e. from the Norfolk end, and we started from the point at which the route briefly coincides with the Peddars Way rather than from Harling Road Station. This meant we walked something over 105 miles of the 110-mile length of the Hereward Way. The stretch to Harling Road Station is along a road, presumably just to get you to a station. That would have been fine if we'd actually been able to use a train, but on the day we wanted to walk the first leg, the National Rail Enquiries website reported that none of the Ely to Norwich trains were stopping at Harling Road.
Between November 2012 and January 2013 we walked 40-something miles along the route, across breckland and fen to Ely and then on to the Ouse Washes close to the Welney Wetland Centre. We also walked a short spur from our home in Denver to the Welney Wetland Centre.
We then got stuck! - partly because the Ouse Washes were flooded, but mostly because of other pressures on our time and some horribly cold and wet weather. We picked up the reins again from Welney Village over a still unseasonably cold Easter weekend. At that time the Ouse Washes were still flooded, but we were able to complete the missing kilometre less than a week later. Over the Easter weekend we progressed to Peterborough and we completed the walk just a couple of weeks later.
In working out the route of the Hereward Way, I've had to find out more about the current state of English counties - I wasn't sure whether Rutland still existed as a county (it does, both as a 'unitary authority' and a ceremonial county, and it is not even the smallest county any more) and I discovered that Peterborough is also a unitary authority, though not a ceremonial county. The path took us through parts of Norfolk and Suffolk then across Cambridgeshire and Peterborough, into a corner of Lincolnshire and a corner of Northamptonshire and it ends in Rutland.
The eastern end of the path isn't well signposted and in some places it doesn't appear to exist at all (we had to follow the road for a short extra section south of Sedge Fen because we were not sure of the route across the fen, and in the same area, our exit from the track which runs along the railway from Sedge Fen to Shippea Fen involved a 'bridge' across a drainage ditch with rather scary holes in it). However, when we got to Prickwillow, suddenly there were signs, and the route remained reasonably well signposted from here all the way to Stamford, though we had another inelegant scramble over a ditch on the approach to the River Nene, between Christchurch and March, and we had some more (lack of) signposting problems between Stamford and Oakham, especially around Ketton Quarry. Where they exist the signposts are usually as shown on the left (I'm not entirely sure what theses signs are meant to represent - other writers refer to a double sword) but a few of the original 'fen tigers' signs (right) remain too.
We were using a 2007 guide published by the Ramblers' Association (Peterborough Group), which is available online from the Visit Ely website. We also used OS Explorer Sheets 229, 228, 227 and 234, and given the rather intermittent signposting I would not set out without a map (OK, I'd never set out without a map...). Other sources of useful information include the Long Distance Walkers Association website and the Hereward Way GPS route website.
In addition to the Peddars Way, the Hereward Way shares its route with a plethora of other waymarked paths, including the St Edmund Way, the Little Ouse Path, the Bishop's Way, the Black Fen Walking Trail (which may not exist any longer), the Nene Way, the Jurassic Way, the Macmillan Way and the Rutland Round. Where another route is signposted, the Hereward Way signposting usually disappears. The final five miles, alongside Rutland Water to Oakham, is shared with the Viking Way. Walking that is one of our next challenges [completed in October 2014].
For more photographs of our walk along the Hereward Way click here.
