To Nether Heyford from Harlestone

I had originally planned to be in Milton Keynes for a few days at the end of this week, to allow for a couple of meetings with friends. as I finished tidying up work odds and ends before 4 weeks of leave. Yes, that’s right, 4 weeks! However, two things didn’t go quite to plan, though the first of those (that a few urgent work tasks hadn’t got done) shouldn’t be too surprising. The second issue arose because the arm of my specs broke last weekend and the earliest optician’s appointment I had been able to get was 9.30 this morning, in Kings Lynn (the wrong direction when you are at our house in Norfolk and wanting to drive to our flat in Milton Keynes). Other social plans bit the dust to allow me to stay in Norfolk until this morning, but I was still hoping to meet Ann at lunchtime at the Walton Lake car park (Milton Keynes) for a picnic lunch, and Richard and I were still hoping to meet up for a short walk on the Midshires Way in Northamptonshire before spending the night in the flat and heading down to Wiltshire and Hampshire tomorrow to see my sister and our grandson (and family).

In making these plans, I had maybe not paid sufficient attention to the amount of traffic on the road on Fridays in August, especially this year when very few people are leaving the UK for holidays. I’d had a slow journey across from Kings Lynn this morning (going via Wisbech and Peterborough was a mistake) and my arrival time for our walk together, following a drive up the A5, was getting later and later until Apple Maps told me I could save 15 minutes by going an alternative route. OK, so this route involved 1.7 miles on a single track lane with grass growing up the middle – and halfway along I met a tractor which completely filled the lane, going in the opposite direction. But it did take me to the A43 and thence back to the A5 just north of Towcester, and I reached The Green in Nether Heyford (SP660587) around 3.20pm, just a couple of minutes before Richard, who had also been delayed. It all felt like rather a lot of fuss for what would be quite a short walk, but although the walk was nothing outstanding, it was most enjoyable and very relaxing. Just what was needed.

We’d decided to walk this leg in reverse because we weren’t sure about parking at the Harlestone end, but we needn’t have worried. After driving through pretty Northamptonshire villages and around the north-western edge of Northampton, we turned onto the A428 and passed Harlestone Heath, where we will be walking on the next leg, then drove through Lower Harlestone and took the dead-end “Church Lane” on the left. Fortunately, at the end, there was a sign marked “car park”, along a narrow lane with speed bumps and out to a large car park at SP702466, with the route of the Midshires Way running right past the car park and the attractive sandstone church. Lower Harlestone, and Upper Harlestone, a short walk away across the fields, are beautiful villages, with lots of thatch, and the Althorp Estate, ancestral home of the late Diana, Princess of Wales, is a very short distance away; apparently, the Spencer Estate owns much of the land and property in the villages.

After leaving Upper Harlestone the path crossed rolling countryside, with a combine harvestor working in the distance, to Nobottle Wood and out to a road in the tiny hamlet of Norbottle. Here we parted company with the Northamptonshire Round, whose route we had been sharing, and headed across more fields, eventually passing the distinctive hill with New Covert on the top of it. Here we stopped for Richard’s daily phone call to his mother and for me to change my socks. We continued past Glassthorpehill, where some attractive cattle were grazing, and so to a bridge over the M1 and the A45.

We reached Upper Heyford and it became apparent that the road from here to Nether Heyford, along which our route lay, was closed. We took the risk that this only meant it was closed to motor vehicles, and we were indeed easily able to walk past the cable-laying operations. In the absence of vehicles (except one delivery van) it was a pleasantly quiet walk, crossing the River Nene in a section which doesn’t have a path alongside, so which we had not walked along on the Nene Way, though we had walked through Nether Heyford, which we were now approaching. At the other side, a car was just doing a U turn, having reached the point at which the “road closed” warnings became a barrier right across the road. He was trying to use an in-car sat nav to get to Kettering and it kept bringing him back to the closed section. The moral of this tale is (a) apps on phones are better than in-car sat navs (because they “know about” road closures); (b) whatever technology you use, carry a map too! We were able to use the OS map on my phone to point him in the right direction, though our lack of local knowledge coupled with the fact that our paper OS map was out of date, not showing the current version of the A45, meant we were probably not a lot of help.

We followed “Middle Street” through Nether Heyford. I don’t think this is the official route, but it was a nice one, going past the attractive “Ye Olde Sun” pub. Nether Heyford is another of those villages (like Roade last week) where attractive historic buildings have been partly swamped by modern development. We were soon back at the car and after collecting the other one, drove to the flat via the M1, not my favourite road, but definitely the most sensible direct route from Harlestone, and perfectly fine on this occasion.