Braybrooke and Arthingworth

Monday 17 June 2019, with Maureen. The first dry day for a week... A little over 7 miles.

I took the route from the June issue of the magazine Market Harborough Living pages 37 and page 36.

For a walk that is advertised in this magazine, we found a few problems in the second half. But more of that later.

The rain and warmth of the last ten days or so have made crops and everything else grow rapidly.

We set off along Newland Street beside the church. this road joins a road with a dead end sign,  and soon becomes un-surfaced. We walked for a short distance, then turned left across a footbridge, before heading diagonally upwards across fields. The path here was well indicated and had been made good. 

 We were happy to cooperate with the local farmer, as the path was clear. The recent rain and wind has blown some of the rape plants across it, but it was still doable without too much trouble.

Looking back to Braybrooke.

The path meets a bridleway, where we turned left and walked as far as the road. On the other side of the road, slightly to the right of the track is the 146 metres trig point.

The footpath continued clear through the next field, and at the boundary we had to turn left and head for the hedge at the bottom pf the field. 

We turned right, keeping a hedge on our left. There is a gap through the hedge - we missed it at first, but it wasn't far back. So, with the hedge now on the right we continued towards Arthingworth. A small hiccup when we had to force our way through some new growth on the corner of a field. Basically we needed to keep near the hedge and follow a straight line.  There is a footbridge, slightly hidden at this time of year. Once we'd negotiated that it was easy to find the way into Arthingworth. We had a short break at a bench on the green  a little while before the main road near the church.

At the church we turned left and walked for about 200 metres. There are two bridleway signs. We took the left hand one, and followed it with little trouble as far as the next road, close to Newbottle Bridge.

Here we turned left and walked uphill to the crossroads. Just opposite there is a stile in the hedge, then wire which we climbed under, since the fastening was extra tight. All this time we were watched with interest by the resident horse.

The footpath took us through several fields, some with cows grazing. In one of these fields we saw a hare, running around for quite a while.  Eventually we reached a track, where there was a small building, and some caravans and beehives. Here the path is not clearly marked, but we entered a field, as per instructions,  through a fixed gate with wooden slats - it looked rather like a horse jump. 

We walked through the scrubby copse, found the brown gate to go through and walked close to the right hand hedge, with the pylons over to our left. At the corner of a copse we turned to the right and began to go northward.  There were a few problems here - broken stiles, barbed wire, and very muddy cow-trampled gateways. 

Tortoiseshell caterpillar?

I'm not sure we spotted the site of the castle this time, but we did cross the mighty river Jordan.

I offered to baptise Maureen, but she declined.
 I think the cow trodden gateways had already done the job for both of us.

We returned to the car, and headed to East Carlton Park for lunch.

Brampton Ash, Braybrooke, Dingley circular.

Mon, 2015 Nov 2 9:38 AM GMT

Led by Mel, with Norma, Tommy, Gordon and me. Very misty, quite muddy, some navigation problems, partly due to mist - and some of us tearing ahead too fast. . .?  One railway crossing now closed. just over 8 miles.

A huge contrast with the weather on Saturday and Sunday!  This walk turned out to be more demanding than expected - mainly because of the weather and muddy conditions. Most of us ended up with soggy socks.

We started from Brampton Ash St Mary's church, and walked east along the main road to Braybrooke Road. 

Leaving Braybrooke

Cows in the mist in the next field

 We turned off following the Midshires Way/Macmillan Way until it joined the Jurassic Way. At that point we turned right and followed the Jurassic Way/Macmillan Way/Midshires Way with Hermitage Wood on our right until we rejoined the road at Hermitage Cottages.

Here we go

Leaves have fallen

 We walked along a path close to the A6 then crossed at the roundabout.

Down the rabbit hole?

 We went under the railway bridge and headed for Braybrooke.

The site of Braybrooke Castle

Braybrooke Millenium monument

November cobwebs

Snack break over

Yep - the river Jordan

Neither deep nor wide

 The next section proved tricky, as we missed the proper turning for the Midshires Way, and took a diverging footpath instead. We found our way back to it whn we realised what had happened. We came out on the road towards Dingley, crossed the A6 again and walked along the quiet road uphill to Dingley. 
A left turn along the old A427 tooke us to a footpath heading north, which soon turned east towards Brampton Ash. Back across the road to pick up a footpath through a field and out behind the church to our starting point.

Brampton Ash church

Between Brampton Ash and Braybrooke, and then Dingley and Brampton Ash the route is very similar to this one from 2011.  Our route from Braybrooke to Dingley goes further to the east, though.

Jurassic Way 7 - Braybrooke to Cottingham

Braybrooke Church seen behind the site of the castle

The path leads under the mainline railway

The Jurassic Way goes behind a plant nursery, and through paddocks

then leads uphill through a wheat field

This bridge is rotting, but there may be a gate nearby.

The woodland is on our right. Over to the left we can see Brampton Ash Church

We had to walk through a corner of Stoke Wood

In Stoke Albany

Manor House

Remains of moat

Saint Botolph's church, Stoke Albany

Wilbarston Church

Map and details

Jurassic Way 6 Sibbertoft to Braybrooke

With Marta. 9 miles, including a couple of (intentional) detours. Weather fine, overcast. Ground muddy in places. Our biggest obstacle was a rapeseed field!

We set off from Sibbertoft, opposite the church.

Sibbertoft church

An easy to miss footpath sign!

From here the path was easy to follow across fields and then downhill into a short section of woodland, between Mount Pleasant and The Lawn. Slippery mud underfoot made it hard going.

Looking back up the slippery slope

The path was easy to follow, slightly downhill until we met a road (Dick's Hill).  We crossed this and followed the path round the lower slope of a hill until we reached a field where the path was marked, but completely hidden by the crop of rape.  I don't think the rain and wind had helped, as the plants were leaning every which way - but this was the only field where we couldn't keep to the path, or even see where it ran. We walked round the edge of the field - easier but still something of an obstacle course.

That a way?

At the other side of the field we found the way markers. The dotted line just to the left of the red dot shows the route we should have taken.  From here, with the map and way markers everything went smoothly until we hit another rape field. This time we followed a clear path cutting across diagonally - we should have followed the field edge. However we were able to adjust our route without much trouble and arrived in East Farndon.

There's a large farm/ hall(?) with good views over the countryside. East Farndon is on a hill.

View of the church and part of the village from the disused pits/ earthworks. The signpost shows the loop of the Jurassic Way here.

Time for a coffee break - there's a convenient bench under a tree near the church.

Just in time for coffee!

After this we walked through the churchyard, and out across a coupe of fields. The path took us to the Oxenden Road.

The cows were lying down peacefully right next to the gate we had to use. Curious, but not too curious.

We noticed a viewpoint on the map, a few hundred yards down the road out of our way - Rupert's view over the Naseby battlefield. 

 





We returned to walk along the Oxenden Road, then made another detour towards the deserted medieval village of Little Oxenden - it's supposed to be a superb site, and we could see a few bumps and hollows, but we wanted to get on, so we may not have gone far enough. Another day?
We followed the road into Great Oxenden, taking a path to the left, parallel to the road. This brought us out right where we wanted to be, opposite The George, where we stopped for lunch. We sat outside, under shelter which had been erected for the Jubilee, and ate to the sound of the one heavy shower of the walk.

We turned right out of the pub, then took the footpath to the right just before this house name post.  We walked over the Great Oxenden Tunnel on the Brampton Valley Way and walked through a short patch of woodland, and then fields.

We passed a farm called Waterloo Lodge, and crossed the road to the farm.

From here we continued to follow the path until we came to a T junction with another path - there's bench half hidden in the vegetation here.  We turned left and followed the path until it became a wider track and swung round into Braybrooke.


Map and details

A previous visit to Braybrooke - April 2009