Twywell circular

Tue, 2013 May 21 10:34 AM Western European Time 

With Marta. Good weather, fairly flat. Some navigational tests because of poor waymarking, and paths not made clear on the ground. One accidental timer stop. One crossing of A14. About 10 miles ish. Grey weather but no rain.

From Twywell to the footbridge over the A 14 .  We head towards Woodford, and walk through, past the pub and turn right, ignoring the church and paths to the left. We walk for a little way along the road - not too busy, luckily.  The foot[path is clearly marked and we walk along a plain track. Too plain, as it happens, and we realise we have gone a couple of hundred yards too far, so turn back.

How did we miss the tumuli, labelled Three Hills? The usual lack of mapwork, I suppose!  Unfortunately we can't see the path on the ground, but work out where we should be able to meet it by walking along field edges and finally see the waymarkers. Back on track we head for Rectory Farm, and turn left into Great Addington, in search of lunch. We find this at the Hare and 'ounds. It's dropped its aitch, poor sign.  A good enough sandwich, a friendly landlady, and rather dear J2O, but it does the trick.

Off we go again, taking the path from Cranford, beside the Manor House.  We have a slight feeling of dread on seeing the sign "Footpath to Burton Latimer", but hope we'll be able to find the paths on the ground as clear as on the map. It's not to be, of course, and each time we stop and look for a trace of a cross-field "made good" path, we are disappointed.  To cut a long story short, we try our best, find some way markers which don't help a lot, and emerge on the A510 about half a mile to the south of the Round House.  For the sake of simplicity we walk along the road - there is a decent sized grass verge.

At the Round House we take the bridle way north, over the drive to Wold Farm, and a couple of fields, before we turn left along a hedge and then follow a diverted path round the edge of a quarry.  

Then over a field and we have to brave the A14 itself.   Life would be pleasanter with more bridges and subways!  The central reservations makes the crossing simply a matter of patience, and we are on the edge of Cranford.  We have to do a bit of thinking to be sure that we're on the right track towards Twywell  At first we wandered too far to the right.  

Once on course, it's pretty straightforward, and we arrive at the Hills and Dales country park - we walk north east into Twywell. 

We saw and heard a pair of lapwings and lots of red kites.

A footnote - Irthlingborough's Waterloo film centenary!

Map and details