This had been the day of the ‘water-music’, the music of the field drains, the splash of tyres though puddles and temporary fords, the rush of the swollen Welland.

I cycled in the overhanging gloom of last night’s hurtling darkness, as the biting east wind continued its troubled buffeting into this half-day.

I cycled up the north side of the Welland Valley, turning off to Gumley before reaching Foxton.

Crossing over the canal bridge, I could glance to the right to glimpse the top of the famous flight of locks.

I passed through Gumley, once a centre of Mercian power, where historical matters of church and the Saxon kingdom were debated and passed into charters and law.

Some contend that the great King Offa lies buried here, and that his hilltop sanctuary high above the wet and once forested claylands below may have provided the model for the Norman French rendition of the Arthurian legends, this place being Camelot, this thin place where old crosses into new and reality into legend.

But at the summit of the climb above Gumley, by the laneside, was another meeting place, this time between old and young, where the dead leaves that had been swept into swirls by the wind all the cold half-day, met the year’s new show-offs.

On this the dankest, darkest, drizzle-ridden half-day of deep winter, the snowdrops were flaunting themselves across the sodden verge of mud, leafmould and molehills. 

Lamp-lights in the day’s overcast, so chastely white… and yet inwardly not without blemish. For the fanfare to Spring blown by those small shining bands of trumpeters can be a cacophony of false notes. After their praised but short-lived blooming has passed, we can still expect the worst of weathers, the gales which trouble the dark and fox haunted wood, and drive sleet across the sodden fields to greet the first footfall of new born lambs.

But still, the snowdrops are the first flower, harbingers of the life-renewing cycle, billions of sunrises in miniature. Here they were on Candlemas Day. Candlemas Bells, once planted thickly in monastery gardens to decorate the Feast of the Purification of the Virgin, they ring in the great awakening and the new life to come.

© John Dunn.

You may also like to see my YouTube Channel, called Highways and Byways.

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It took a low gear to keep me cycling up the hill out of Cottesbrooke towards Creaton. At the summit the view up ahead, slightly to my left drew me to a lane-side pause.

What caught my eye first was the curving, swooping edge to a defined swathe of woodland at the opposite side of the shallow valley formed, over centuries, by a narrow tributary of the River Nene. Creaton Covert, the name of the wood tells of the reason for its planting about one hundred and fifty years ago, possibly more, which was to nurture the population of foxes hereabouts. For the countryside I surveyed before me has long been hunting territory, and has been shaped by the sport.

The hill I had climbed gave me sweeping views to the horizon where, beyond the bounded wood, I could make out the spire of the great Saxon church of Brixworth, in its day the greatest building north of the Alps, dignifying the hilltop stronghold of the Mercian kings.

Almost monochrome, the colours laid out before me were predominantly deep green, apart from the wood, which was a green so deep it fell into near-blackness. I had ridden through fields of ridge and furrow, but now the predominant impression was one of criss-crossing enclosure hedges.

Dark earthy leaf-mould, green pasture, deep dark woodland, the haunt of foxes, these were the textures and colours of that moment. But there was depth beyond immediate sensory experience. I was mindful of the generations who had passed this way before. These people and their necessary tasks, building, ditching, draining, hedge-laying, these people and the search for transcendence through the thrill of the chase, they were all preparing the landscape of my present. 

© John Dunn.

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Orton in old English means ridge top settlement, and a glance at the OS map’s contour lines confirm that Northamptonshire’s Orton does indeed straddle a ridge top. Land falls away steeply to the North down to the Slade Brook, and much more shallowly to the South, towards an unnamed brook. All this geography was academic at the time I cycled along the wet and puddled lane to Orton from Foxhall. There were no views to enjoy due to the misty conditions and general gloom. The general atmosphere drew my consciousness in to things up close. The sound of tyres on wet tarmac and gravel, the squelching through mud, the splashing through the temporary fords, the bare may hedges, uniformly straight and level after hedge clipping, and the colourless sky, so low that it put a muffling lid on sound.

As I entered Orton on this cold midwinter’s day, my thoughts turned to the bone numbing cold of the recluse hamlets and farms a few generations ago, when winter sleet tore through the miry clay valleys and the remote ridge tops. How bleak and hazardous life was when crops from the fields of ridge and furrow, the common fields scraped out of the forest brambles and clay, had to be eked out through the iron months of frost.

Today under the thatch are fridge and freezer. Supermarket delivery vans scurry about the little wet lanes, whilst handymen in white vans, piled high with ladders, maintain ancient cottages that have never looked better, whilst villagers take holidays.

At a nearby school which began life as a grammar school for boys, endowed by the local lord of the manor, mothers turn up in four by fours to collect their kids, who turn out aglow, running and laughing.

We can look with thankfulness upon the less arduous life in the countryside.What was once a place to flee for a wage, slate roof and coal fire in the city, has become a haven of escape in which to retire. Online cottage dwellers scrape from the internet images from around the world whilst cosy warm in front of their blazing woodburners. What they see and hear gnaws at the illusion of escape at every moment. How long before the tsunami of globalisation hits? The isolation of the recluse hamlets has in all senses gone. You can run (or cycle), but you can’t hide.

© John Dunn.

You may also like to see my YouTube Channel, called Highways and Byways.

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I cycled across the expanse of flat low-lying land, which stretches without a field hedge to be seen, between the lane gates at Beck Dairy and Badge Lodge. Ahead of me, the cluster of buildings of Glebe Farm and the start of a steep climb, which leads the eye to the commanding position of Brixham’s great Saxon church at the top, the largest building north of the Alps when first constructed under the Mercian kings. 

I came upon first one in isolation, then two together, then clusters of horse boxes and trailers. Then I heard the tell-tale and evocative country sound of the fox hunting horn. Hounds emerged on to the lane ahead of me, followed by the red-coated Huntsman and Whipper-in. Then the hunt as a whole followed, trotting along the lane for a short while, before bursting into the field on my left, released to gallop behind the howling-barking hound pack in pursuit of their quarry. This is Pytchley Hunt Country, and what I saw that day was as traditional a country scene as anyone has witnessed in the last two to three hundred years hereabouts.

I cycled on through Brixham, Scaldwell and Old, to find sanctuary by a field gate on Mill Lane, near Kite’s Hall Farm for my picnic lunch. From the moment I unpacked the saddlebag, I was entertained by a swirling flock of linnets, whilst my bird-call app informed me that fieldfare and redwings were about too, sadly not to be seen from my sunken gateway, yet comforting to know that they were nearby all the same. They will be around for two or three months yet, and I will be back to see them.

© John Dunn.

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I cycled southwards, along Sulby Road. An ancient Road, which centuries ago was chosen as the county boundary between Northamptonshire and Leicestershire, taking up the role temporarily abandoned by the rivers Welland and Avon. Sulby Road in fact crosses the watershed between the two. At the time of the embryonic Saxon shires, or shares of land, the Midlands were an area of dense and near-impenetrable woodland. Boat travel along rivers was the principal and often only means of transport across country. Travel West-East at this point would have meant hauling a boat out of the Avon and dragging it on sleds and rollers over the watershed and into the Welland. Sulby Road, then a track in the woodland, may have witnessed the tortuously slow progress of such boat-haulings. Did Offa and the other Mercian kings pass this way as they traversed their Saxon realm.

Having  passed through Welford, I headed towards South Kilworth, dropping down the steep contours of Downtown Hill from 554 feet at the roadside trig point, to 52 feet in the Avon Valley below. After first crossing the Grand Union Canal, the next bridge is over the River Avon. Were the Saxon’s boats dropped back into the water here after the long haul from the Welland, or did they manage the feat higher up at Welford? What does remain of the Saxons here is the county boundary between Leicestershire and Northamptonshire, a duty falling upon the Avon, as fulfilled by the Welland over the other side of the watershed.

To the left of the bridge over the Avon, the river has been dammed back as Stanford reservoir, named after the nearby village.The reservoir was built in 1928 and, as the Leicestershire & Rutland Ornithological Society
tells us on its website, lies on an imaginary line drawn between the Wash and the Severn, a proven ‘flyway’ for migrating birds across the centre of England.

That proven flyway follows the same trajectory as the proven waterway followed by the Saxons, the Welland flowing from the Wash in the East, the Avon flowing to the Severn in the West, but with this arduous overland connection up and over the watershed.

© John Dunn.

You may also like to see my YouTube Channel, called Highways and Byways.

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I rode across a landscape in need of a collective name, rich in rolling hills, pasture, small streams, woods and ponds.

I’ll call it the border-land between Leicestershire and Rutland for now. 

I motorcycled on the Leicestershire side through Hallaton, passing close by the church, village green and the strange conical structure topped with a cross, known as the Butter Cross, which stands where a market was once held.  

I left the village from its north side, riding on to pass through East Norton and Loddington.

The wind was from the south, making this an unseasonably warm day, occasionally bright and sunny day.

Following days of rain, the roads were treacherous where tall hedges and tree cover left roads damp and slippery with the help of Autumn leaves. This inevitably induced slow riding to keep the bike as upright as possible where tyre grip was low.

Over a cattle grid and into the wide open acres of Launde Abbey, once an Augustinian Priory, then Tudor Manor House, and now home to a Christian community, a quiet place conducive to its aims of offering prayer, hospitality, and retreat.

Once through the grounds the landscape of little fields, pasture and woodland returned, as I followed a narrow lane, down and up the steep sides of the River Chater, and between two farms which, standing between Withcote Hall and Withcote Lodge, must be the survivors, or inheritors, of the long lost village of Withcote.

Riding beyond, reaching the summit of a rise at 633 feet, I reached too the ideal spot for a field gate picnic with a view.

Resuming my ride, now westward, I sought out the bridleway down an avenue of trees, which would lead me to Withcote Hall (fenced off and undergoing a protracted restoration after falling into near-dereliction), and there, though the pine trees, the object of my journey, the stunning Tudor chapel with windows fit for a king.

A towerless, pinnacled box made from pale gold ironstone, it looks like a miniature King's College Chapel, Cambridge.

Withcote Chapel is Early Tudor probably finished around the 1530s.

There was once a parish church somewhere serving Withcote in the 13th century, but at some stage this disappeared and the chapel became the centre of worship for the parish, undoubtedly due to population decline. 

Stepping inside (yes - it was open thanks to the Churches Conservation Trust), was like stepping into a jewel box, such is the effect of 16th century stained glass attributed to Galyon Hone who was the King’s Glazier in 1517 and did extensive work at King's College Chapel, Eton college, Westminster, Windsor Castle and elsewhere.

Withcote Chapel, a treasure indeed, and a fitting way to crown a glorious day on two wheels in the Leicestershire-Rutland borderlands.

© John Dunn.

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I rounded a bend just north of Pickworth in Rutland, and passed a wide off-road area in front of a gated field. Picnic gold for this motorcyclist! I U-turned to the spot, pulled in, dropped the side stand, removed my helmet and threw my jacket over the saddle. Seat bag unzipped and coffee flask out, I commenced a meal in peace and glorious solitude.

Accidentally, I had found myself at the gate to Robert’s Field, a small meadow of restored limestone grassland managed by the the Lincolnshire Wildlife Trust. In the warmth of early Autumn sunshine, I passed through the gate to take a gentle stroll around the two clearly maintained fields that are sandwiched between Holywell Wood to the West and Newell Wood to the East. Too short and slow to be considered as bodily exercise, I nevertheless less felt soulfully invigorated by that walk.    

Riding away from Robert’s Field in the direction of Pickworth, I immediately passed through Lincolnshire Gate, just a name on the Ordnance Survey Map, nothing visible, but which recognises that the Rutland-Lincolnshire border crosses the lane just south of Robert’s Field. 

On the grass verge in front of the church at Pickworth is an information board. Needless to say I was enticed to pull up.

The verge itself was part of the wide droving road called The Drift, that passed through Pickworth. During the golden age of droving between 1700 and 1850, today’s quiet lane would have been, occasionally, packed solid with beasts of all kind, principally cattle but also pigs, geese, turkeys and more, as they were driven to and from markets. Why The Drift? As it was important that the stock ended the journey in good condition, beasts were ‘drifted’ at only 12-15 miles a day.

Looking at the Ordnance Survey Map it is possible to see how The Drift connects with lanes and bridleways that run in a broadly West-East direction. My personal assessment is that the livestock passing through Pickworth would have been ‘drifted’ from the markets in Melton Mowbray and the Midlands more generally, on a route eastwards to Downham Market and beyond to Norwich, Kings Lynn and other population centres.

And Pickworth’s church? I had a look inside. A small affair reflecting the shrunken size of the village. A bigger church once served a larger village here in the Middle Ages. That fell into ruin with the depopulation of the village, but serving to inspire a poem of social commentary by John Clare. Here are the first four verses of a longer poem entitled

ELEGY ON THE RUINS OF PICKWORTH, RUTLANDSHIRE.
HASTlLY COMPOSED, AND WRITTEN WITH A PENCIL ON
THE SPOT.

These buried ruins, now in dust forgot,
These heaps of stone the only remnants seen,—
" The Old Foundations" still they call the spot,
Which plainly tells inquiry what has been—

A time was once, though now the nettle grows
In triumph o'er each heap that swells the ground,
When they, in buildings pil'd, a village rose,
With here a cot, and there a garden crown'd.

And here while grandeur, with unequal share,
Perhaps maintain'd its idleness and pride.
Industry's cottage rose contented there,
With scarce so much as wants of life supplied.

Mysterious cause ! still more mysterious planned,
(Although undoubtedly the will of Heaven :)
To think what careless and unequal hand
Metes out each portion that to man is given.

© John Dunn.

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Cycling up the hill through the pretty village of Gumley, I was struck by the sight of an Italianate campanile type tower at the top of the hill. It vies for attention with the steeple of the nearby church and wins easily. Later research revealed this to be a highly embellished water tower set above the stables to Gumley Hall (demolished in 1964). The tower held water for the horses stabled below.

I took the lane towards Saddington, which passes over a ridge of 540 feet at the trig point by the lane-side, just above Holloway Spinney.

I pulled up at a laneside gateway on the steep descent from the ridge alongside Holloway Spinney, and contemplated how the field full of very pronounced ridge and furrow across the lane, now full of sheep, would once have been full of hardworking peasants cultivating their individual strips of land in vast open fields, before enclosure, hedgerows and sheep revolutionised the landscape laid out before me. The field stood out from the others, which have long since had their ancient ridge and furrow ploughed out.

The top of the field which coincides with the top of the ridge, has a heath-like feel about it. It is rough, wild, scrub, unfarmed. There is I think gorse amongst it all at the highest point. Why unfarmed? There’s probably a rocky outcrop below it all.

Looking out in the direction of Fleckney and Newton Harcourt, I could see hills on the horizon, in the distant haze. Were they beyond Leicester? Yes I think so. Likely Charnwood Forest or the Leicestershire Wolds.

© John Dunn.

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Cycling along the quiet lane from Clipston to Sibbertoft, I was drawn to a halt by my curiosity when I saw an information board, erected in a field just before Lowes Farm. 

I was surprised to see that it had been erected by the Woodlands Trust; surprised because there is no woodland in the immediate area.

Nevertheless, The Woodlands Trust informed me that in the field beyond were the remains of a medieval settlement called Nobold (a name supposedly derived over time from New Build), remains which lie underground.

An agricultural community once scratched out a living here, before the place was abandoned in the 14th century.

It had already been abandoned 200 years previously when the Royalist Army commanded by Charles I and Prince Rupert tramped past here, on their way to meet their fate on the battlefield of nearby Naseby in 1645.

And it was after passing through Naseby that I cycle down the quiet, narrow and delightfully rural lane to Thornby, a village straddling the old turnpike connecting Leicester and Northampton.

Soon after crossing the main road, I pulled up at a T junction in the lanes, whilst riding towards Guilsborough. I noticed a grand looking house over the fields ahead. The Ordnance Survey map told me this was Thornby Grange, and post ride research revealed that King George VI, before becoming king and as the Duke of York, and his wife Queen Elizabeth (The Queen Mother) leased Thornby Grange for two hunting seasons in the late 1920s and early 1930s. 

For I stood at the heart of fox hunting country, home to the Pytchley Hunt, across the rolling hills where Northamptonshire meets Leicestershire, a region of picturesque villages, undulating landscapes, and grand country houses, rather like Thornby Grange.

Written and read by John Dunn.

© John Dunn.

You may also like to see my YouTube Channel, called Highways and Byways.

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I cycled up the rise to Kelmarsh, through a chorus of birdsong, after a shower of warm summer rain, passing the church at the summit to my right.

Crossing the main road, I passed estate cottages to my left.

A plaque recorded a project at the height of World War Two to rehouse people rendered homeless by a domestic fire which got out of control during a strong wind.

THESE 10 COTTAGES 
WERE REBUILT IN 1948 
BY COL. C. G. LANCASTER MP
 ON THE SITE OF 13 ELIZABETHAN
 COTTAGES DESTROYED BY FIRE ON
 4TH MAY 1943.

There are undulations and ground workings in the fields at the top of the rise after Kelmarsh, unmentioned on the OS map. Was there quarrying for stone in the past, perhaps providing building materials for Kelmarsh Hall, the church, or estate workers’ cottages?

Or were they something to do with the tunnelling work for the now disused railway up ahead.

An avenue of trees leaves those earth workings and follows the contours round to an area of woodland called the New Cover, a patch of woodland created and managed to provide cover for foxes. For here I’m at the heart of what was once prime fox hunting country.

The farmhouse called Top Lodge stands above the line of the tunnel on high ground, I guess upon an outlier of Oolitic limestone. There’s an airshaft across the lane from Top Lodge, confirming the presence of the tunnel below. 

There was a not too distant hum from the A14 away to my right, the sound level exacerbated by a brisk south wind, a warm wind keeping temperatures high.

A water tower noted on the OS map was totally shrouded by dark, dense, ivy-covered trees. It stands opposite the entrance to Wheatfield Lodge Farm, beside which the OS map also notes a “disused camp”. I presumed at the time that this must have referred to an army camp, but why here?

Turning right at Harrington, I headed south, crossing the A14. Immediately on my right a sign reads “Aviation Museum”. As I press on I’m struck by the plateau of flat land opening up to my left, strangely detached from the gently undulating land that I had cycled across until then. Connecting with the Aviation Museum not long passed by, I asked myself, was there an airfield here once? I saw no evidence to confirm my suspicion. 

Passing on to other thoughts, I forked left at Foxhall, intending to cycle on to the village of Old. Near Kites Hall Farm, my lane passed through fields planted with purple-blue phacelia and sunflowers. I paused at a gate, surrounded by flowers and breathing in the perfumed air. How wonderful.

After pausing at Old, a village name derived from the (w)old on which it was located, and talking for ages to another cyclist who pulled up beside me at the green for a chat, I cycled on through Lamport and Draughton , before heading back to Foxhall and Harrington. Once more the flat plateau stretched out before me, and shortly before Foxhall, I came upon the roadside memorial.

My earlier suspicion was confirmed. The peaceful lanes and countryside I had cycled through once resounded to the noise of aircraft taking off from a giant airfield, constructed during the Second World War. Home to the US Airforce group known as the “Carpet Baggers”. Clandestine airdrops and bombing missions left from here en route to Germany and other targets on the continent. The memorial commemorated the two hundred airmen who gave their lives flying from this very spot.

One war was over, and another took hold. The airfield now under crops, trees and fields of flowers held Britain’s first nuclear weapons of the Cold War. Should the worse have befallen the world, Thor missiles would have been launched from near where I was standing.

The Thor missiles were removed in 1963, and the buildings, runways and

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