Wimpole Hall to Hardwick

The clocks went back last night, meaning that our days of leaving home at lunchtime for a moderate length afternoon walk some distance away are over for another year. We left home at around 10.30 am and drove to a car park by the recreation ground in Hardwick (TL374592). This is about a kilometre from the point at which the Wimpole Way passes to the south of Hardwick and in fact there is parking much closer (including right by the path, at TL372582) but we hadn't been aware of that. We drove to Wimpole Hall by way of Toft and Comberton, and parked in the National Trust's overflow car park.

We ate our lunch sitting in the car and then set off. The Wimpole Estate was busy with half term/Halloween activity, and we were amused by a father who told his small child that they would definitely go on the tractor to Home Farm next time they visited; I hope he either means it, or that they are not planning to come back! We walked in front of the Hall and out onto the Estate. The belt of trees we were aiming for was clearly visible up on a hill, but there was no obvious path in the place indicated by the diamonds on the map, so we turned up the path where others were walking, just outside Wimpole's formal gardens. We passed the Ha-ha, then turned left and climbed up through an avenue of trees. This brought us to a clear track running alongside the woods. We turned right, definitely back on the route of the Wimpole Way.

Soon we reached a permissive path heading into the Woodland Belt, and just as we were wondering whether this was our route, we noticed a "Wimpole Way" sign. The track through the woods didn't give us the views I had hoped for back to the folly and the Hall, but it was attractive walking, with the trees resplendent in their autumn colours even though the weather was slightly gloomy. After skirting around the Estate, we reached a road where people obviously park in order to walk around the woodland belt. We turned left away from Wimpole Hall, and after a bend, turned right onto "Crane's Lane", the track that would lead us all the way to Kingston.

Crane's Lane had a variable state - sometimes grassy track between hedges, sometimes track alongside fields, sometimes a broad avenue, and eventually, as we approached Kingston, a roughly tarmacked lane past houses. A former colleague of mine lives here, but I'm shy when it comes to meeting people I know when out walking, so we slipped past his house quietly and walked through the village of Kingston, complete with a sheltered water pump, a village hall (where I have been before for a field-trip debriefing), an ancient Church and quite a lot of thatch.

As we left Kingston we descended quite markedly, and after a short walk along the B1046, we turned into the road through Caldecote and crossed a stream. Another colleague used to live in Highfields Caldecote (the more modern part of Caldecote, a mile or so to the north) so I know this road, and remember flooding here. After crossing the stream we climbed again, passing Caldecote's church and eventually turning right off the road. A sign here told us that it was 2 miles to Hardwick and only 6.5 miles to Cambridge (though from the distance we walked on the following leg of the path made me realise that this is perhaps to the outskirts of Cambridge, not the centre).

After a short distance our path turned to the left to run parallel with the road through Caldecote/Highfields Caldecote and adjacent to the attractive Hardwick Wood. We passed several groups of people out walking, and two women who were clearing the ditch next to the path. We left the wood behind us and turned to the right on a track across undulating countryside, again passing several groups of people (mostly dog-walkers). This track brought us to the outskirts of Hardwick, where we left the route of the Wimpole Way and walked up through the village to the car.

Following leg