Nene Way

As usually described, the Nene Way follows the route of the River Nene from its source near Badby in Northamptonshire to its outfall into the Wash beyond the Sir Peter Scott Lighthouse to the north of Sutton Bridge in Lincolnshire. According to the Long Distance Walkers' Association webpage, the route is 114 miles, but we encountered a number of sections where the route we ended up following was not as shown on the Ordnance Survey map, so our total distance may have been slightly different. Also, we walked the route in reverse, starting from the Lincolnshire end in 2018 - just! (it was New Year's Eve). We progressed a little further during 2019 (to Guyhirn in Cambridgeshire) but progress was then stymied, largely by flooding.  

It took the Coronavirus pandemic for it to occur to us that...

1. We had already walked the section of the path from Whittlesey through Peterborough to Wansford Station (when on the route of the Hereward Way in April 2013) and 

2. There was no reason why we shouldn't walk the path in summer, thus eliminating what is a regular winter problem. 

I guess we'd thought of the Nene Way as an autumn/winter/spring walk so as to leave the summer clear for more exciting walks. However, this rationale turned out to be short-sighted, and our wanderings along and close to the River Nene through summer 2020 became a glorious and memorable way in which to escape the horrors of the pandemic, once total lockdown had eased. By this stage we had started travelling relatively regularly between our house in Norfolk and our flat in Milton Keynes (although working from home had become the "new normal" and I only visited the Open University campus three times over the summer) so we walked most of the route whilst at least one of us was en route between the two residences.   Ironically, our first attempt at our final leg, from Flore to Badby, failed because of flooding in early October 2020, though somewhat to our surprise (and because of the prompt arrival of our grandson Bertie) we were able to return to the path and finish it just two weeks later.

As you will see from the descriptions of our individual legs on the path, the River Nene has a delightfully varied character. At the Lincolnshire/Cambridgeshire end it is canalised and it remains tidal to the Dog in a Doublet lock and sluice, north of Whittlesey. Further upstream, it is a glorious meandering river, still with locks and weirs and frequently with multiple strands (sometimes with mill races leading to historic mills, and on one occasion passing the now very modern Bugbrooke Mill).  The Nene Valley has witnessed considerable gravel extraction and there are now many flooded gravel pits, frequently now reinvented as nature reserves or fishing or boating lakes. 

The Nene Way follows the River through Wisbech, Peterborough and Northampton, and the outskirts of Oundle and Wellingborough. It leaves the river to visit Higham Ferrers, Irthlingborough and many attractive villages. It's an ancient landscape, which becomes increasingly hilly the further upstream you go. Northamptonshire in particular is surprisingly attractive and definitely worthy of further exploration. especially given how close it is to Milton Keynes.

In walking from the Lincolnshire end, the Nene Way crosses Ordnance Survey Explorer Sheets 249, 235, 227, 224 and 207, though we managed without the first of these, instead using the online version (to which we have a subscription). We'd bought a second-hand copy of "Exploring the Nene Way" by Mia Butler, though this only covers Northamptonshire, and predominately describes circular walks based around the Nene Way, so it was of limited use. The signposting was generally good, with pretty signs in Northamptonshire (if a bit ordinary elsewhere). However, particularly on the latter parts of the route, there were a number of legs where the route on the ground disagreed with the OS map, sometimes quite substantially. Mostly by good luck, we managed to find the correct route without difficulty most of the time.