Grafham Water to Spaldwick
Walked by Sally and Richard, Sunday 9th September 2018
6.2 miles of walking (2 hours 20 minutes), about 5.7 miles progress on the JordanWalks route of the Three Shires Way
For more photos of this walk, click here.
As usually described, the Three Shires Way starts at Tathall End and ends with a circuit of Grafham Water, but we'd decided to start at the Graham Water end. We didn't have sufficient time today to walk around Grafham Water, so instead we parked one car in a layby near an agricultural machinery retailer at TL127730 on the outskirts of Spaldwick and took the other car back to the car park at TL165682 near the Grafham Water Visitor Centre, and we started walking from here. It was a very pleasant afternoon for walking, though the sky became a bit threatening towards the end.
Both Richard and I have indistinct memories of visiting Grafham Water previously, in my case possibly when visiting my Uncle Bill and Aunty Eileen who had a cottage in the nearby village of Easton. I visited Easton such a long while ago that if I did visit Grafham Water at the same time, the reservoir, which was established in the 1960s for supplying water to the growing population of Milton Keynes, would have been a new attraction; my Dad would have liked that!
We weren’t initially very taken with Grafham Water because it cost us £3.50 to park (though it is cheaper during the week) and there was a not very savoury smell, but things soon got better. On the map, the route of the Three Shires Way is shown as heading back along the road we had driven along, presumably because it is primarily a horse-riding route, and you aren’t allowed to ride your horse along the cycle route and footpaths closer to the reservoir. However we decided to follow the cycle route, which took us through attractive woodland running parallel with the reservoir, then at right angles to it towards the village of Grafham. There were a fair number of people, both cyclists and pedestrians, following the same route.
After passing through Grafham, there was a short section of road walking before we turned off onto a track, on the top of a ridge with good views to Ellington, with the A14 and four wind turbines beyond. The Church in Ellington, like those in many of the villages around here (certainly including Grafham, Easton and Spaldwick), has a tall spire; we’ve become used to squat Norfolk churches with towers, so this takes a bit of getting used to, but the churches in what was Huntingdonshire are certainly elegant.
We had not passed any “Three Shires Way” signs, and it is debatable whether we were technically on the Three Shires Way yet, or still on what might be described as a circuit of Grafham Water. There weren’t always footpath/bridleway/byway signs of any description and we nearly missed a slight kink left, just before West Wood, but we soon found the correct path and enjoyed a kilometre or so of walking along the edge of the wood.
At the point where our path met a byway coming up from Grafham Water to the left, we turned right onto it. We found ourselves on “Hartham Street”, a rutted enclosed track, with attractive (and tasty when we stopped to pick the blackberries) berries etc. We descended from the ridge and eventually reached a minor road. Just as we did so, we were overtaken by some cyclists, the only people we had seen on the byway. At the road there was a sign indicating that motorised traffic is forbidden between October and April, thus implying that it is allowed now. I guess that might explain the deep rutting in the track, but there was no traffic today and that was pleasant.
Also as we left the byway, we encountered our first Three Shires Way sign – at last! The rolling countryside here was most attractive, and the spire of Easton Church was visible, not very far ahead. We continued into Easton, a picture postcard sort of place, oozing with thatch. We took a slight diversion to find the cottage where Uncle Bill and Aunty Eileen used to live; actually it is possible that Eileen still lives here.
We left Easton by way of another byway on which motorised traffic is banned through the winter, but this one was much more open than Hartham Street, with good views to the surrounding countryside. We were soon on the outskirts of Spaldwick (Easton was originally under the control of the Manor of Spaldwick, and gets its name from "eastern settlement"). We turned right, following the route of the Three Shires Way, then parted company with the route when it headed off to the west, and walked through the centre of the village and out to our parked car. It didn’t take us long to collect the car and drive to the Bedford South Premier Inn, where we were staying.
