Wheels from Ivy Cottage

The road to Rutland 

I turned right off the A427, just to the east of the A6 Market Harborough bypass, picking up the B664 northeastwards, the Road to Rutland.

The road starts on a similar course to the River Welland, but soon cuts out a wide bend in the river, passing straight over high ground between the spring line villages of Sutton Bassett and Weston by Welland.

The high ground here is an outlier of the iron infused Jurrassic limestone, formerly quarried further east to feed the furnaces of steelworks at Corby.

It is the iron that gives the rich golden hue to the stone in the cottages and churches that I passed by, village to village. These villages offer visual delights only surpassed by the beauty of the undulating landscape, as the road descends to cross the River Welland and its flood plain, to rise once more after Medbourne, only to descend once more to Stockerston, after which it crosses the Eye Brook over a narrow humpbacked bridge.

Crossing the Welland I passed over the ancient boundary between Northamptonshire and Leicestershire. Crossing the Eye Brook, I passed an equally historic boundary between Leicestershire and Rutland.

Once in Rutland, I climbed steeply out of the Eye valley via two dramatic doglegs on the King's Hill, after which the Jurassic uplands plateau out, appropriately enough around the hilltop town of Uppingham. 

Out of Uppingham, I rode northwards through the hill country between Uppingham and Melton Mowbray, passing through the villages of Ayston, Ridlington, Brooke (where I pulled up to look at the old Brooke Priory, and its ancient earthworks, the evidence for a minor house of Augustinian monks), Braunston-in-Rutland, Owston, Newbold and Burrough on the Hill. The latter village's name means 'fortification on the hill’; and sure enough, Burrough Hill, an Iron Age hillfort rises up near the village on a promontory 690 feet above sea level, commanding views over the surrounding countryside for miles around. 

I picnicked beside the little lane to Great Dalby, between the hillfort and Salter’s Hill, on a bridleway which might well have been an old salt way in ages past.

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

https://www.youtube.com/@drjohndunn2898

I cycled down Haselbech Hill, through the shade of Shutterdown Spinney, to the village of Cottesbrooke in Northamptonshire.

After passing the entrance to Cottesbrooke Hall, I pulled up to look at The Grange, a substantial, elongated manor house, with impressive chimneys. I turned to look behind me and chanced upon a delightful view of thatched cottages, nestled amongst trees by the roadside. These I photographed.

Riding back through the village and beyond, I turned left, passing through a gate to follow a lane through a wide open field grazed by sheep. The ridge and furrow were extensive, bearing the imprint of their medieval creators, much as they were before the sheep were introduced to replace the strip field peasantry. The open nature of the large field gave just a flavour of what the treeless landscape of strip farming must have been like before enclosure changed communities and landscapes forever. 

Passing through another gate, I cycled on to join the undulating road to Naseby.  

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

https://www.youtube.com/@drjohndunn2898