Road to Home 2022 Day 13: Gretton - Great Oakley

28.5 km

Walked through the village of Gretton and followed the Jurassic Way across fields of vetch to the pretty town of Rockingham, granted a charter as a market town by Queen Elizabeth I in 1600.

Rockingham market cross (1600)

Pub in Rockingham frequented by Charles Dickens 

Rockingham village tea room

For those just joining me, I am walking from Leeds, my birthplace, to Canterbury, where the Via Francigena pilgrimage route to Italy begins. I am about halfway now. You can see my route on the interactive map on Tony Maskill-Rogan's Abbey Walks web site, coppied below. 

Today St. Bernard's Way took me from Rockingham through the villages of Great Easton and Bringhurst, through fields of sheep, wheat and vetch. 

Now grown as fodder for livestock, vetch (favino in Italian) is related to beans and peas (most closely to the broad bean, fava) and was one of the first crops  domesticated, already grown in the Near East 9500 years ago! But over the millennia people have found better things to eat, and by the time St. Bernard of Clairvaux shared a bread-of-vetch meal with his monks during the famine of 1124 to 1126, it was considered an emblem of his humility. So it is appropriate that I should be walking through fields of vetch on St. Bernard's Way! 

"Their bread like the prophets of old, was made of barley, millet and vetch and was of such miserable quality that once a visiting monk, lamenting sadly their plight, took away with him some of what had been set before him in the guest-house, that he might show to everybody the marvel of men, and such men, living on the like." (Vita Prima I.v.25, quoted in Williams, St. Bernard of Clairvaux (1952), p. 24).

Baa baa black sheep, have you any wool? 

In the village of Cottingham I wandered into St. Mary Magdalene Church, where some major cleaning and decorating was underway in preparation for the Jubilee next weekend. The volunteers greeted me warmly and offered me coffee and cake.

Sarayou is originally from South India and has lived here 25 years. She walked the Camino de Santiago from León, with her husband and children! We had lots to talk about 😁

From here I proceeded on to the neighbouring village of Middleton and then followed a wide, straight footpath along the side of East Carlton Countryside Park, through a field of horses, and over more fields to Wilburston, where I stopped at a bench with a view to eat my lunch. The bench was inscribed Rest awhile and think of those who did not come back to the land they cherished. 1914 - 1918 remembered 2018. I thought this was a fit place to stop and rest on a walk dedicated to my great-grandfather, who perished in France at the age of 28 in 1916. On the third day of my walk I passed his birthplace, and when I continue on the Via Francigena in France I will visit his grave. 

In the afternoon, more fields and a rather monotonous walk along the runway of an abandoned airfield. Then I came to the former site of Pipewell Abbey: St. Bernard's Way touches upon all the Cistercian abbey sites along the route. Following the dissolution of the monasteries by Henry VIII in 1538, Pipewell Abbey, like so many others, was used as a convenient source of ready-cut blocks of stone. So it may be said to live on in Pipewell Hall, built out of its stones. Pipewell Hall is now used as a wedding venue, and you can't go and see it unless you're invited to a wedding. The closest I could get was the other side of the field. 

This is what it's like walking on an abandoned airport runway

This is, possibly, what Pipewell Abbey looked like

The birds don't think much of the information panels

Where Pipewell Abbey was

That's Pipewell Hall in the distance 

It was only a short walk across the fields to Great Oakley, but one of those fields contained a small herd of bullocks and heifers, i.e. teenaged cattle, who seemed to find it entertaining to follow me over the field and see how close they could get before I shook my sticks at them. I tired of this game before they did and ducked under a barbed wire fence to walk through the adjacent field instead. From here I followed Harper's Brook into Great Oakley, where I made my way to the roundabout on the A6003 and pigged out on junk food at McDonald's before retiring to my airbnb. I had a good mind to order a proper beef burger just to get my own back on those naughty cattle, but I stayed true to my vegetarian diet and had a McPlant instead! 

My room tonight

I walked a half-circle around Corby today!