Gretton to Great Easton and return

Gretton seems to have it in for us! Last time we were here, a car nearly ran me over. On that occasion we'd spotted a potential parking place near the way into the "Pocket Park", at SP902945. opposite Gretton House on High Street, so that was where we headed today. When we arrived, there were two cars parked in the space to the west of the access to the Pocket Park, but there appeared to be an equivalent space on the other side of the access point. However, as we went over the kerb, there was a horrendous noise as the front of the car dropped down over what was actually a ledge, Fortunately, no damage appeared to have been done and we were able to straighten the car and leave it here; parking this side is OK, you just need to be extremely careful how you access it.

The next excitement was a furious barking as a couple with a dog passed a single female dogwalker at the entrance to the Pocket Park, but we were soon walking back along towards the war memorial and Gretton Church, which we'd visited last time we were here. Despite apparently having the tallest church tower in Northamptonshire, Gretton Church was difficult to photograph today, because the leaves had come out on the trees. One of my feet felt uncomfortable so I stopped at one of the benches by the war memorial and the old village stocks to remove a stone from my boot. The route of the Jurassic Way turns left here (actually slightly before the Church) and continues through the pretty village, but eventually a path led past modern houses and out into open countryside (past a sign warning of a wasp's nest, which thankfully we didn't encounter).

We soon reached a fine vantage point up above the Welland Valley. From here our path descended steeply from the high ground on which Gretton and Rockingham Castle (and, less prosaically, Corby) sit, down to the valley below. At the bottom of the descent, we reached a railway line. We followed alongside it for a while, then crossed to the other side of the line by way of a tunnel under the railway, then gently veered away from it on the other side. For the next couple of kilometres from here,  the OS map shows the route of the Jurassic Way very much as a straight line heading towards Rockingham, tracking the higher ground to the left. However, on the ground, it wasn't that simple and it was one of those routes where the signposting was good...apart from when it wasn't! At one stage we took the wrong gap in a hedge, and ended up in an overgrown area, so we had to retrace our steps. Later on, the route shown on the map would have taken us straight across a large field of oilseed rape but there wasn't an obvious way of doing this. We went round the edge!

Richard thought he'd spotted Rockingham Castle in the distance as we'd descended from Gretton, and the castle was definitely visible from halfway along the walk from Gretton to Rockingham. Closer to the castle, we began to see the houses of the village of Rockingham, lying along the A6003 to the north of the castle. Our path turned left and climbed across a field before reaching the main road through the village by way of a yard belonging (as no-doubt most of the village does) to the Castle Estate. It's a pretty village but rather a busy road, though there were sufficient gaps in the traffic to enable me to take photographs. 

Had we turned left here we'd have continued the climb towards the castle. Rockingham Castle is open to the public in the summer and we visited last August, so we didn't need to visit again. The castle was built on the instructions of William the Conqueror and has been occupied by the same family for 450 years. We enjoyed the visit and it didn't cost us anything because we're Historic Houses members. However, most unfortunately, what I remember most about the visit is the extremely slow and rather bad-tempered woman at the entrance point. We'd been en route from Norfolk to Milton Keynes and so had been in separate cars, and it took an inordinate amount of time merely to be able to park the cars and therefore to eat our picnic lunch together. 

Returning to today's walk, we turned right onto the A6003 through the village. After passing the village hall and the Sondes Arms, we turned left by the Barn Tea Room onto a footpath towards Great Easton. We were initially just cutting off a corner to the B670 to the north of Rockingham, but there were nice views back to the castle, when gaps in the trees permitted us to see. As we reached the road, a cyclist came past, and headed onto the bridleway we were heading towards. This section of our route was busier than the rest; we were passed by more cyclists and we met dogwalkers. When we got there, a sign in Great Easton informed us it is 4 miles from there to Rockingham, but the route we took wasn't much more than a mile, so it makes sense that cyclists use the bridleway!

We had crossed the River Welland back in Stamford, and on several early legs we crossed the river from Northamptonshire to Rutland, but I'd assumed we had left the River Welland behind now. Wrong! We crossed it now, and shortly afterwards we left Northamptonshire, now for Leicestershire; for some reason the boundary isn't exactly on the river here. We entered what Julia Thorley describes as a "tree plantation" in her book about the Jurassic Way, and that's a good word for it (the description "wood", while accurate, gives the wrong impression; the trees are still quite young). We caught up with two dogwalkers;  a man and his young daughter. As we overtook them they turned around to head back the way they had come, but one of the dogs wanted to come with us.

We reached a track which took us to the road to the east of Great Easton and we turned left towards the village. It's another pretty place, with houses built of a mellow golden building stone. The Jurassic Way turns left by The Sun pub, but we continued straight ahead and climbed up to the church. Close to it, we were rewarded, as we had hoped, by a bench on which to sit to eat our lunch (actually there is another bench slightly further back too, but ours had a better view of the comings and goings).  Several people came past and said "hello", including a woman who had, I think, been cleaning the church. 

After lunch, we had a straightforward walk back to Gretton, unlike Julia Thorley and her husband who had to do the return walk when they hadn't expected to, because they'd left a set of car keys in the wrong place! (though it isn't as far as her book reports; I can understand the overestimate given the circumstances of their walk, and the book doesn't claim to be an instruction manual of directions etc., but she'd almost put me off doing the "there and back" walk because I thought it might be a bit too far for today - until I checked the distance on the map!). I prefer circuits to walks on which we retrace our steps, but we prefer to take just one car when we can (and we won't be running two cars for ever) and sometimes you see something on the return leg that you didn't see when walking the other way. Today was a case in point: as we walked from Rockingham to Gretton we noticed the village of Caldecott down below us and then, more surprisingly, we realised that from some distance back, you can see the tower of Gretton Church, peeping up above the trees.