Kelmarsh Station to Welham and Weston-by-Welland

It was a bank holiday Monday and my birthday, and we didn't have any plans so, despite the fact that I only got back from staying with our daughter and family at the end of last week, and we're going on holiday on Friday, we decided to head out for another walk on the Midshires Way today, after spending last night in Market Harborough to get us in the right place. We booked into the Market Harborough Premier Inn, and had a good journey there, marvelling again at the lovely rolling Northamptonshire countryside, which appears to extend over the border into Leicestershire. Before it got dark last night we'd had time to have a quick look around the attractive centre of Market Harborough, with its old Grammar School building next to the unusually named St Dionysius Church and also, after a walk distinctly uphill out of the town centre, visiting Union Wharf, the terminus of the Market Harborough arm of the Grand Union Canal. The Market Harborough Arm joins the Leicester Arm near Foxton Locks, about 2 miles away from the Premier Inn, but two miles was too far to walk there and back in daylight, and I was too mean to pay £3.50 for parking for a short visit.

We had a pleasant evening and a reasonable night at the Premier Inn, then I opened my birthday presents and we ate the breakfast provisions we had with us. We'd not been able to spot any parking spots in Welham (though the road between the Church and the Old Red Lion pub is quite wide so maybe we could have parked there) so we resorted to a convenient layby at SP778914 in the village of Weston-by-Welland. By 8.30am we had parked one car here and driven back to the Brampton Valley Way car park at Kelmarsh Station (SP747805) and were once again walking along the disused railway. There weren't many people on the railway this morning, though we could hear traffic on the nearby A508, and we met a family in the Oxendon Tunnel.

The Oxendon Tunnel is very slightly shorter than the Kelmarsh Tunnel which we walked through on Friday, and slightly damper, with definite puddles to negotiate, but I once again enjoyed the experience. At the other end we were looking for a path up to the route of the Jurassic Way, which we would be following for a while, and we thought this would be well signposted; wrong! We were expecting the path to be up to our left (west) from the cutting to the north of the tunnel and we knew that we'd be following the Jurassic Way to the right (east), so we'd need to cross the railway line; so when we saw a bridge ahead, we thought this was our way across. The first path we saw, just before a bench on the left, appeared to be heading back the way we had come towards Country Bumpkin Yurts up above us. Then we saw a path up to our right and scrambled up it...but it was a dead-end (and we also realised that the bridge across the cutting was not functional, so we had clearly got something wrong). So we returned to the Brampton Valley Way and inspected the map more carefully. Ahha! The route of the Jurassic Way is actually over the top of the tunnel, so the correct current route (just possibly replacing an older, stepper one that has been washed away) is up towards the yurts and beyond, then, with both the Jurassic Way and the Macmillan Way, over the top of the tunnel - though the vegetation was quite dense so you couldn't see the railway line and might not have realised you were crossing it.

We emerged from the dense vegetation into a field of cows and descended then ascended, feeling a little uncertain of the correct direction. However, in general, the Jurassic Way and Macmillan Way signposting was quite good, but where there were Midshires Way signs they had mostly faded to the point of being unreadable. It doesn't give the impression of being a much walked path, but this didn't matter greatly today because we remained on the Jurassic Way for several miles and the Macmillan Way for even longer. There had been some re-routing around Waterloo Lodge then, at the turning by the "works" on the approach to Braybrooke there was just one sign clearly bearing the names of all three paths.

Other people may know Braybrooke for its former castle, its church (very difficult to photograph by the way) or its beer, but for Jordanwalks the most significant thing has to be the crossing of the River Jordan. We continued with both the Jurassic Way and the Macmillan Way on a rather unclear route to and then across the railway, and then to the A6. The section immediately after we'd crossed the A6, near "The Hermitage" was convoluted to say the least, but we emerged onto a rather enjoyable stretch alongside Hermitage Wood. We were walking a fairly constant distance behind a couple of walkers with a dog. Towards the end of the wood we, rather unexpectedly, passed through a corner of it, but the route was quite obvious with occasional signs. However, at the next crossing of paths, where the Jurassic Way continues straight ahead while the Midshires Way and the Macmillan Way turn left, there was no signposting at all. Fortunately we were looking out for the turning, so this wasn't a problem.

Our route took us past "Red Hovel", where the name "hovel" would originally just have meant that it was a simple dwelling, perhaps meant for animal occupation (like the Ox Hovel we passed on the Nene Way near Nether Heyford, not too far from here). However the Red Hovel was now in a fairly ramshackle state, so the move conventional meaning is appropriate too, although its attractive red colour made for good photography. We continued on a minor road towards Brampton Ash, whose church, up at the top of the hill on the A427, is a local landmark. However, we were more interested in finding somewhere to sit for an early lunch. If you're going to find a seat in a village, near the church is a good place to start, but the route of the Midshires Way through Brampton Ash doesn't pass the church, presumably so it can avoid the A427. However we decided to continue on the lane up to the A427, then to walk the short distance along the main road, rather than taking the path behind the village. When we got to the church there weren't any seats, but by then we'd passed (and sat on in order to eat lunch) a bench by the post box on the lane through the village. There were also wide verges for us to walk on alongside the A427, so everything worked out well.

From the main road, our route took a path and then a track to the north, and descended then climbed again, up the side of a field of barley. It was quite a climb, with views behind us back to Brampton Ash and, closer at hand, a combine harvester. We were approaching the point at which the Midshires Way and the Macmillan Way part company, with the Macmillan Way continuing straight ahead to Weston-by-Welland (where we'd left the car) just a mile and a half away. However we decided to continue on the Midshires Way, which takes a rather circuitous route around Weston-by-Welland to Welham. Unfortunately we realised that we were on the wrong side of a hedge, so couldn't get to either route, so we had a retrace our steps a little way.

Back on the route, we descended, being passed by a few cyclists coming up the hill towards us, despite the rather bumpy nature of the track. Past former farm buildings which now appear to house various businesses, the track became a surfaced lane; just as well really, as a lorry came down the track behind us and turned left along the road towards Market Harborough that we had driven along earlier. We turned left too, for a short distance before turning right onto a green lane signposted as the route to Great Bowden. This took us past another field in which a combine harvester was busy, then over a rather small River Welland, much closer to its source in the Hothorpe Hills a few miles to the south-west than to its outfall into The Wash at Fosdyke (Lincolnshire). Meanwhile, in crossing the bridge we passed from Northamptonshire to Leicestershire. We soon reached the narrow but tarmacked "Great Bowden Lane" and turned right, and we followed the lane all the way to Welham. We passed a number of walkers and were passed by a family going faster than us and also by a number of cyclists; unsurprisingly here because we were on National Cycle Route 64. The wall outside the church at Welham was bordered by a lovely display of hollyhocks, but again there was no obvious bench on which to sit, so we sat on our coats on the grass to eat apples and sort out my feet.

This was the point at which we needed to leave the route of the Midshires Way in order to return to our car, a mile away in Weston-by-Welland. I hadn't been looking forward to the this walk along the road, but it was very quiet and not as much of a climb as I'd expected. Close to Welham we passed back over the River Welland and so back into Northamptonshire. No-one else had parked in the convenient layby in Weston-by-Welland, but when we returned to Kelmarsh Station the fair-sized car park was almost full, so we were pleased to have completed the section on the Brampton Valley Way this morning. We had a good journey home to Norfolk, along the A14 to Huntington then across the fens i.e. a different route from our outward journey yesterday, which had used the A47 via Peterborough and had also been good.