Day Fourteen

Friday 8 January 2010 – Brixworth to Foxton

Britain was still in the grip of the Big Freeze. It was an awful lot below freezing somewhere in Scotland, and the BBC’s woman was there to gush about it. From Brixworth I headed back to the Brampton Valley Way, which would take me into Leicestershire and almost into Market Harborough. There were about ten more miles of the old trackbed to come, never exciting but always pleasant, with good walking on the carpet of snow, and frequent views across the country to either side. This made the Way a notch up from other railway walks, which spend hours in cuttings or between thick hedges with no views at all.
 

Most crossings were on a level with the Way, so occasionally I had to pay attention as I crossed a busy road. The walk had two novelty features – tunnels. Under hills near Kelmarsh and Great Oxendon, twin tunnels had been bored and, in either case, one of the tunnels had been retained for use by walkers and cyclists. Neither tunnel was a compulsory part of the trail – alternative routes were clearly marked. By I had heeded the advice to carry a light by renewing my torch batteries, so I plunged iinto the first tunnel. The surface was mostly pretty good, with just the occasional raggedy hole caught in the puny beam of the torch. But when I reached the middle of the tunnel, things were rather different. From the bottom of a ventilation shaft, curtains of ice hung down into the tunnel; on the floor, a great circle of uneven ice looked like some frozen cauldron. I picked my way gingerly past this scene of icy chaos and, passing beneath more slagmites of ice, reached the Northern portal without incident.
 

A couple of miles further on I reached the second tunnel. This was much less dramatic overhead, but the walking surface was more problematic: puddles and runs of water had frozen. The best walking was at the side, and I was in no serious danger. But these tunnels had been a most interesting experience. Apart from the occasional short coastal tunnel through a headland, the last time I could remember anything similar was in French gorges, notably the Gorge de Verdon in Haute Provence. Lacking a shelf to establish a trackway, the builders had had to bore into the side of the gorge in two places, to creepy effect.
 
Just North of the second tunnel, a truly bizarre sight greeted me. Towards me walked a man, accompanying four women, each of whom wheeled a baby buggy. So far, so intriguing. Then, fifty yards or so behind, a fifth woman also wheeled a buggy past me. By now I wanted to rush back to check whether the man had had a proud grin on his face, but wiser counsels prevailed.
 
Just South of Market Harborough, I left Northamptonshire and entered Leicestershire, just over a fortnight (in walking terms) after leaving Dungeness. This seemed to me like reasonable progress; so far I have averaged almost exactly fifteen miles a day, which is not bad for an occasional walker in the darker half of the year. In Market Harborough, it was back to lethally slippery pavements. I stopped for some soup in a town centre pub, where I was approached by a very nice woman, and later her lunch companion, who had spotted the backpack and stick, rightly surmising that I had not just come from the weekly shop at Sainsbury’s. The two women were keen walkers, and we exchanged routes taken. I mention this because it doesn’t often happen. Most people are either incurious about each other or too polite/inhibited to speak out (I’m the latter).
 
Market Harborough is a bustling place. Despite nowadays being within commuting distance of London by train, it still hads a country town air, and I passed the odd florid-faced man who looked as though he might have marched into town after a small-furry-animal-slaughtering session. In truth, he was probably a banker lying low until the heat abated.
 

A mile out of town, I turned West, across the Harborough Arm of the canal system, on to field paths leading to Foxton, by way of Gartree Maximum Security Prison. The paths were easy to follow, in spite of the snow cover, because Of Leicestshire’s admirable policy of maintaining waymark posts, brightly painted yellow at the top, at every twist and turn. Being in good time, I turned aside from Foxton Village for a quick look at Foxton Locks, often visited in the past but not when there was snow on the ground. Foxton Locks connect the Grand Union Canal summit with the line to Leicester and the Harborough Arm already mentioned. As I gusssed they would do, the locks and their surrounding paraphernalia looked stunning under snow, with strong sideways light from the afternoon sun to complete the magic. So I walked along the towpath back to the village in good heart.