Brigstock-Stanion-Geddington-Brigstock

Thu, 2014 Aug 28 9:15 AM BST

With Maureen, Eddie and Gordon. Drizzly before start but then dry and warm. Some mud early on - ploughed field. About 8.5 miles.

We walk from Brigstock Village Hall, across the bridge and round the cricket field to the kissing gate, and followed the path. Just after crossing the brook and walking through some trees we have a choice of paths. Ours leads to the left straight uphill across the field, Then we go over more fields where the crop has been harvested. Eventually we reach a huge ploughed field, and decide to follow the line of the path this time, rather than detour round the edge. 

At the other side we go into a wood, emerging via a bridge into grassland. Another bridge and another small pasture brings us to the path into Stanion. We turn left and walk along the road until we reach the pocket park sign. Another left turn, and a walk through the park brings us to a small road where we turn left again. We cross a bridge on this road and soon afterwards find a footpath sign into trees.  The path is pleasantly mud-free, but lead out to a recently ploughed field. We follow the rather muddy track round the edge and uphill. At the top our sign leads to the left of the hedge, and we take this direction until we reach the wooded Geddington Chase.

We can see Chase Lodge almost half a mile ahead and walk towards it. The path goes behind the dog kennels, and round past the garden. The sunflower below caught my eye.

 We take the path keeping the garden on our left, and head gently southwest and downhill to the old brickyard, which is being converted to a community garden.

Directly after this we turn sharply to the left along the byway, known as Clay Dick Lane.  We follow this for around two miles until we reach Chase Farm, and Windrush Farm and the track becomes Dusthill Road.  Just before reaching the village we take a footpath to our left, which leads past a field full of vines. 

From here we reach the back of the cricket pavilion and make our way back to the village hall.

Map and details

Geddington to Weldon - Around Corby

Fri, 2014 Aug 22 9:34 AM BST

With Marta. Part of Around Corby route. Mostly fine with odd shower. About 12 miles. Some problems with route-finding. Ploughed fields etc.

Geddington ford

We pass the ford and narrow road bridge, and the Eleanor Cross on our way to Wood Street, which leads up to Geddington Chase. We take the footpath to the left of the old brickworks, ignoring the clearer bridleway to our right.

Old brickworks, soon to be a community garden

The path takes us uphill into the woodland, to Chase Lodge. We keep straight ahead to the right of the dog kennels. At the end of the trees we should have taken the path next to the hedge slightly angled to our right. The path runs along with the hedge on the right. You can see on my map where we had to retrace our steps - concentrate on the task in hand!  

Eventually the path turns left, down a slope and on to a track leading under two rows of electricity pylons. Keep straight ahead and meet a minor road. Turn left into Stanion. We paused for a coffee break in the pocket park, where we met a local volunteer doing some much-needed weed clearing.

Then we followed the road to a junction, where we turned right. After the road bent slightly left we almost missed the footpath sign to the right - it's slightly set back from the pavement!

sunflowers going to seed

The section between Stanion and Brigstock was a bit tricky, as parts of the path were poorly marked and overgrown, and one very large field had recently been ploughed. 

Hard to find waymarks

We eventually arrived at the path alongside Brigstock cricket pitch, and made our way to the Green Dragon for a sandwich.

From here we walked back past the tall old clothing factory, past Back Lane, Old Dry Lane and New Town, before taking a path to our right at an opening past some houses. At this point we were consulting Mel Jarvis's book , Around Corby, closely (p 17)!  The path tooks us north over a couple of fields, then across the A 6116. The path still heads north and enters the wood ahead about a quarter of the way along the edge from the right. We soon met a wider track where we turned left and followed this for about a mile. Then there is a rough track which leads on to the A427 between Weldon and Oundle.

We turned right, and walked downhill into Weldon, turning left into Church lane, with Willow brook running alongside until we almost reached Weldon Church with its lantern for forest travellers.

Weldon church

More info on this church here .

Here we turned right along a footpath and made our way back to the car.

Map and details

Corby - Little Oakley - Geddington Chase - Stanion - Corby

Led by Barry. With Maureen, Gordon and Eddie. Weather fine, though rain threatened. Very strong wind. Lots of lovely mud. A whisker over 10 miles.

Rumours of rain on the way. Someone mentions snow.  I hope we've already had the morning's promised shower.  We set off from Barry's house, through the new streets of the Snatchill area, turning right from Windermere Drive across a mud-bath field to a fine graffiti decorated footbridge over the railway.  Waterproofs on for a while, but it's hardly worth the effort. We turn slightly right, skirting South Wood. 

We follow the edges of fields and join the minor road to Little Oakley. A turn to the left takes us towards the village, and we turn off left again just before the first houses.

We must be walking further than planned in the next section. When I look at my Garmin map, I see we had to walk two sides of a triangle, or three sides of a square, simply to avoid the worst of the muddy ploughed fields.  No matter, we make it to and across the A43, and walk alongside the woods towards Geddington Chase.

The sky glowers at us, dark grey. "Quick, let's take a break before we're soaked!"  No arguments about that.  Maureen's scones go down a treat.  Next time we look up the sky is blue again.

Ready to roll?

I think that's the right way

On we go up past the house in Geddington Chase - there seems to be just one dog in the kennel today, and it looks friendly - for a guard dog.

We head north then north east following the path over fields and bogland to Stanion.

We turn left and take the road through the edge of the village to the A43.  Luckily this road has a wide grass verge, and we walk to the roundabout, and turn towards the Euro-hub.  There's about a mile and a half of road, fringed by litter-infested hedge bottoms, before we turn off by the Wincanton distribution depot.

The Roman road 

There's a section of Roman road marked on the map. We pay our respects,  then turn right and slide and squelch our way along the path by the railway.

It's hard work, but we soon arrive back at the graffiti-covered bridge, and retrace our steps, fighting against the wind, to our starting point.





Map and details of the route