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Long Distance Trail
Means Selfies! #4 at the
Bewicke Arms, Hallaton.
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Summer Jollies coming around has me hurrying Down Country with almost indecent haste, so that I can get onto the Leicestershire Round again on the days available to fit in around My Parents' plans and needs, happy to lend a hand when needed and aiming to scratch off another three legs from the guide book in two trips, and that cold day on Saturday is already seeming like a distant and aberrant memory, as we are already back in the grip of hot, hot days where the heat tells even when leaving the house in the early morning. So Leicestershire in July looks much riper than it did last year as the Parental Taxi rolls me out to Hallaton so that we might get a jump off at the Bewicke Arms at 8.35am, still rating the village as one of the prettiest in the county in the Rutland Ironstone fashion and we start our track into the southeast corner of the county by walking along Churchgate, past the church of St Michael & All Angels and the CofE primary school to find the path that leads us out into the countryside for the start of the field walking down to cross the stream that flows on down towards the River Welland, reminding us that we are in the corner of the county that doesn't sit within the vast Trent-Humber watershed. A fun thing to note in the adjacent field is Hallaton Castle, a motte and bailey construction that is dated to the Iron Age and the protection of the ancient metalworking industries in this quarter, and looks particularly well preserved and is something to regard as our field walk raises on a southwestern track to eventually present views over the wrinkles around the Welland valley, where Slawston village sits in the shadow if its own hill and an almost new farm is located at the hills crest. Drop sharply down through the pasture to cross the stream at Horseclose Spinney, and then rise again to meet Othorpe House Farm, which mostly hides behind its woods, and standing as all that remains of the lost village of Othorpe, a theme that just keeps on coming around in this county, soon left behind as we pass the barns and machinery store to hit the fields once again. Onwards through wheat fields and more sheep pasture to approach Cranoe village, which also hides, below the slope of the hillside that we are traversing, and just off the alignment of the Round path, but a short detour has to be made so we can get an up close look at the church of St Michaels's, as taking many pictures of the village churches in the county will probably always be a hobby of mine.
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| Hallaton, with St Michael & All Angels. |
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| Hallaton Castle. |
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| Othorpe House farm |
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| St Michael's church, Cranoe. |
Church Hill Road gets us back on track, rising over and off this first high (for Leicestershire) ridge of the day, not getting many views through the thick hedges on the mile or so over to Glooston, nestled in it own little valley and with a rather boldly designed mock Jacobean mansion at its eastern end, though its many ironstone cottages show more appeal to me, especially the terrace on Main Street opposite the Old Barn Inn, and our path will lead us west past the village hall, after we've detoured again to look at the tiny church of St John the Baptist. Back on the round, we can startle the sheep in the enclosure next to the open fields, and after 4 weeks of hot, dry weather we can be sure that the conditions underfoot are probably going to be pretty straightforward as the baked surface breaks up under my boots, and we have wheat fields to pass over again as we march on, tracing the stream down from the village and passing over the alignment of the former Roman Road, Via Devana or Gartree Road depending on your preference and completely invisible in these fields. More visible is the way ahead towards Stonton Wyville, advertised by barns on the nearby horizon, with brick cottages and wooden lodge houses visible when up close, not that there's a whole lot more to it beyond, despite the Manor house being considerably sized sat next to the huge cedars that surround the little church of St Denys. It has a bench where I can sit to water, happy that I remembered to chill it before travelling, and then we can set off south on the sole road through the village, down to the busier road coming down from Kibworth and then onto the farm track beyond, which would provide a straight ahead route to the Langton villages (all five of them), but we have a turn to make to keep the Round interesting by going over the top of Langton Caudle, which is what counts for a big hill in these parts. It's not much above 50m above the surrounding levels, but it's still a nicely steep push to ascend, the path rising through the middle of an open wheatfield to get the high ridge that offers a lot of views over the way we've walked this morning, and while the yellowed arable fields offer a pleasant aspect it reveals a major problem that this county has, and that's the lack of contextual views as there's very little in the landscape that's distinctive or visible from many miles around. Not a problem we encountered that much in the high parts of the West Riding, but from the hill top we get a fine elevated panorama to the south and east , but with few clues to what we are looking at in the direction of the Northamptonshire border, and it's mildly surprising to find someone else up here, a twitcher parked by the 147m trig point, probably expecting to have this hilltop to himself for the morning for birdwatching purposes.
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| The Main Street terrace, Glooston. |
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| Somewhere in the vicinity of Via Devana. |
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| St Denys church, Stonton Wyville. |
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| Ascending Langton Caudle. |
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| The 147m summit of Langton Caudle. |
The heat doesn't inspire a desire to linger and so we head off on a southwards track, through a sloping field full of lung dry grass and thistles shedding their seeds in quantity, leading us down into a rough and open pasture that offers a view onwards to our next village target of Thorpe Langton, as well as over to the prominent Parish church tower in Church Langton, where we won't be heading, though it will remain on the horizon for several more miles of trekking, one of the very few distinctive features in the landscape out here. We pass down through a spinney and into another rough field, one that has been carved up by cattle in many places, but is completely dry going aside from around a single spring, which comes as a bit of a surprise, and as we progress down towards the village we risk our first cattle standoff, but these bovines seem happy enough to ruminate at a distance and it turns out that it's a pair of ponies that are reluctant to let me get over the stile and out of the field as their heads keep swinging into my path until I finally squeeze my way around them. Join the lane that we left to pass over the Caudle, beyond the ford on the stream flowing down towards the Welland, and we rise on approach Thorpe Langton, passing the former farm buildings plots that have been claimed for suburban development, rising past the newer semis to get the proper sort of village aspect on Welham Road, with the Baker's Arms just off our route for the day, which we follow up Church Lane, past the deeply prosaically named terrace named Near The Church. The path that leads us past St Nicholas's church, one of the junior churches of the Langtons, but enlarged and rebuilt in the 19th century, so it combines the best of both Medieval and Victorian stylings on its high promontory, one to admire before we hit the field paths again, over to the farmstead that displays its 1823 vintage boldly, heading down a green lane to meet the westward track over the fields that sits just over the edge of the ridge of land above Langton Brook. Then on across more parched pasture and getting another recognisable feature to see in the form of the Bone Rendering mill, sat by the canal arm leading down to Market Harborough, and passing below Park farm and finding more cattle that won't be moved from their ruminations as we pace the mile or so over to East Langton, which isn't even slightly visible until we are dropping down to pass through the horse enclosure at the end of the field trek. Rise to meet Back Lane and enter the very nicely presented village, mostly cast in red brick and concealing its later encroachments well, certainly one for the desirability scrapbook, with the Bell Inn standing by the village cross roads and some very nice cottages and redevelopments sitting down Main Street opposite the Grange, one of the larger non-stately houses in these parts.
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| Descending Langton Caudle toward Thorpe Langton. |
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| The brook crossing. |
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| St Leonard's church, Thorpe Langton. |
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| Docile cattle in a parched landscape. |
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| Main Street cottages and the Grange water tower, East Langton. |
Depart the village down the shady lane and before our next field walk starts we find a bench for our second round of elevenses, sat in the full heat of the sun, unfortunately, so I endeavour to find somewhere cooler to take lunch, and then hit the pasture southwards between the equestrian farms of Grange and Astley farms, passing the Lottery monument, which supposedly celebrates the 1839 Grand National winner, though its date of Feb 21st 1886 doesn't clarify matters helpfully. There are four fields to cross to get to the passage over Langton Brook, only a couple of miles from the River Welland and the Northamptonshire border, and then there's one more field to cross to pass under the Midland Mainline, though a passage that looks like it's usually a quagmire, but certainly isn't at the moment, and then it's onward into a large field of oats, where we get sight of trains thundering past in both direction, down to London and up to Leicester. Pasture resumes for the plot that leads up to a small plantation and then it's back into wheat, noting that while the ears look fully formed and ready to harvest, the stalks have barely grown higher than my knee, when they usually stand somewhere around my waist height, and then we run upon the A6 Market Harborough bypass, which is the first of the county's A-Roads which we have crossed twice which gives me the feeling that we must be somewhere around the halfway mark on the Round path already (this feeling turns out to be correct as we right around the 50 mile mark). It looks like we are headed straight for the Bone Rendering mill as our walk resumes, but we turn west one field shy of it, to meet the side of the B6047 Harborough Road, which we pace alongside as far as the Bowden Business Village, on the site of Bowden Inn farm, and then cross over to strike the field walk on towards Foxton. On we go into a sea of wheat, feeling that we are close on somewhere familiar as the embankment of the Grand Union Canal's Harborough branch runs off the south of us, and Church Langton's tower still rises to our north, hammering on through three fields of crops before we land in pasture again, still tracking east and meeting our first proper cattle standoff of the tour, as a half dozen cows fill the sole shady corner of the field by the gate that I have to pass through. They will move, eventually, as if the heat is too much to get them agitated, and then we can strike the last couple of fields on the way to Foxton, and it rather unusual to get a whole hour of trekking in this county without passing through anywhere, possibly the baldest stretch of the entire round, so it's good to find our way across the rough plot up to the village, landing on Swingbridge Street opposite the Grange, while wondering where the village study centre might have been, because literally every schoolchild in the county will have visited it at some point in their youth.
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| The Lottery memorial, near East Langton. |
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| Railway action on the Midland Mainline. |
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| Bowden Inn farm (former), now Bowden Business Village. |
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| The sentinel tower of St Peter's, Church Langton. |
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| Field walking to Foxton village. |
There's passageways to walk to get to Middle Street and Main Street, and the village seems to have gotten much more suburban than I can recall, by then again my school days trip here was 30+ years ago, 1985 I think, with Mrs Bassett's class doing our canals project, and there's only a few old cottages to see as we rise up the side of the Grand Union Canal, which is where the Round path joins the towpath, but as we've been this way before, we'll allow ourselves a short detour to the south bank. Rise past the former Smithy that has a weighbridge in its driveway, and up past the Black Horse inn to find a shaded spot on the Millennium bench below the tree just down the hill from St Andrew's church where we can take lunch, getting a good rest out of the heat and still having sufficient water for the remainder of the day, checking off the fifth leg of the round from the guide book and sending out my lunchtime update to My Parents. Press back into the afternoon's heat, ascending to the top of Main Street and then onto the bridleway that leads back down to the canal, which feels like it out to be an access road the locks site, but actually has little traffic of any kind on it, and we arrive by the residential wharf and among the tourist below the Foxton Inclined Plane, or boat lift, passing The Locks Inn, and getting that view of the ten locks ascending steeply to the summit level. Move on, crossing the flight and passing the Bridge 61 inn and rising over Bridge 62 to get back on the route of the Round, following the Grand Union canal path back towards Leicester, past more moored residential barges but only for one bridge as the route splits westwards over Bridge 63 via a particularly steep footbridge, to start us field walking again, hugging the field boundary as we run towards Gumley, atop its nearby hill. The view of the lock flight is pretty impressive as we look back, giving an insight into the Industrial Revolution mindset that could have created something so boldly different from what had gone before, and it's still a sight that tickled my creative side as if I eve figure to walk across the southern counties to London, this is surely the way I'd go, along the towpath of the GUC all the way to Brentford. Still, we have this county to work our ways around first, and there's a hill to ascend to get to Gumley, proving that Leicestershire can bring the climbs if it wants to, giving us our last look back to the tower at Church Langton and rising across the slanted pasture in the shadow of Gumley Woods to approach the village from the east, and despite there being two featured hills on the day's trek, this is where we'll actually hit the day's summit at over 160m up, lower down than both the start and end points of the trail from last weekend.
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| St Andrew's church and the Black Horse inn, Foxton. |
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| Foxton Locks, up close. |
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| Grand Union Canal, Bridge 63. |
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| Foxton Locks, from afar. |
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Ascending by Gumley Woods.
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Gumley village looks like one that has largely resisted suburban growth, and it still has an actively rural feel as some of its cottages and farmsteads have not received the makeover treatment, though its most notable feature, the stables block that is the sole remnant of the Victorian pile of Gumley Hall has been turned into des-reses, but its bold Italianate style with campanile, fashioned after Osbourne House means its still keeps so much of its vintage quality. Our path takes us up to St Helen's church, loftily spired and fashioned in Ironstone and Ashlar like all the best churches in the county, and we'll break in the shade here for the last watering break before we hit the final stretch of the day, starting off past the churchyard and through the sheep pasture by the rectory house, to Debdale Road and onto the hill's top, were another field of cows has to be contended with, though I'm pretty sure that today has proved to be too for any of them to get angsty. There's hinted view towards the hills of Charnwood Forest here, soon lost as we decline, but are almost immediately presented with another rise as Smeeton Hill presents its 156m height ahead, which we ascend on a rough pat by the gorse to get another brief view of Coplow Hill, as we meet the pasture around Hill farm, and our way forwards clings to the southern side of the hill, above the fields where sheep shelter from the heat and I get a good reminder of why I don't walk wearing shorts as I take a lashing while passing through a field of dried up rapeseed plants. At the western edge of the hill we get a view over Saddington Reservoir, constructed to feed the canals in the 1790s and not looking low despite a month of heatwave conditions, and that will be our companion as we hit the descending path from this particular hillside staying on our left as we drop down to meet the tangle of streams and drainage channels that sit below its dam, all of which flow north to meet the canal on its embankment near Smeeton Westerby. The finish line comes at the top of the next rise, as Saddington village has been on our horizon for the last mile or so, though plots of rough pasture and at the top of a green path, which drops us out between the old post office and the former chapel on Main Street, halfway through the guide's sixth leg, but quite far enough for today, as the hottest day of the year finally starts to tell, and I'll roll down among the many pleasing red brick houses of this village to meet The Queen's Head at just after 2.40pm. That's the exact same time as the Parental Taxi rolls up, and despite it being not much over 10 miles back to base in Humberstone, I'll persuade them to stop for Lemonades in the pub yard with me, as we get so few opportunities for Summer drinks on the terrace together, and the staff get extra kudos points for serving us with cold beverages, in spite of having officially closed up shop just before we arrived.
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| Gumley Hall stables block, with Campanile. |
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| Smeeton Hill. |
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| Above Saddington reservoir. |
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| Channels and Streams below Saddington Dam. |
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| The Queen's Head and St Helen's church, Saddington |
5,000 Miles Cumulative Total: 3445.2 miles
2018 Total: 332.7 miles
Up Country Total: 3101.1 miles
Solo Total: 3166.4 miles
Miles in My 40s: 2039 miles
Next Up: Unknown Territory awaits in South Leicestershire.
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