Steps, Day 3, Ermine Street

I'm going to walk from Little Stukeley to Great Stukeley today, via Ermine Street. Ermine Street is an old Roman Road that ran from London to Lincoln and York. It's also known as the Old North Road and it even has it's own society, The Ermine Street Guard. They do reenactments and demonstrations, much like Civil War buffs do in the south. Anyway, I'll pick up where I left off yesterday, in Little Stukeley.

Getting towards the end of Little Stukeley is the Alconbury Baptist Church. It's pretty close to the base.
Of course, just about every base I've ever been to has a static aircraft display. RAF Alconbury is no exception.
Hello, Main Gate! We came through here every morning when we'd take Michael to his day care.
Base housing here seems to be decent. I have no idea what it's like inside the houses.
Nothing but fields and fields.
And fields and more fields. There are walking paths all over the place. I did some reading on them and many of them are paths from Roman times.
Hedgerows. Did you ever read about hedgerows? Well now you can. They were used very strategically during the World Wars. If you set your machine gun up in a corner, you could mow down whoever happened your way. That, of course, is just one use for them. There are other, nicer uses.

I thought I'd stop here and just take a quick 360 degree look around me.
Off to my left.
This is where I came from.
Lots of fields that are a beautiful yellow in the spring from all the rapeseed, aka canola, and some other names.
And then back facing towards Great Stukeley again.
Just about to the village.
The Stukeley Country Hotel. This is a beautiful old building and it's pink!
It looks much prettier from the front. It's pretty typical of an old pub/inn, appearance-wise. I don't think I saw a single ratty one when we were there.
More cool houses.
It's the Elderly People crossing.


I'm just about out of Great Stukeley now. This barn caught my eye. It's pretty old and it has a cool deely-bobber (can't remember what those things are called . . . wind-something) on the top of it and . . .
There's an advertisement for a guy who does thatching on the side of it. Just don't see those around here.

Check out the lorry!
More of those pretty hedgerows.
I'm out of Great Stukeley and still on Ermine Street. This street goes into Huntingdon, which is where I'll head next. I think I'd like to go to the Huntingdon Garden and Leisure Centre. It's still probably 4 or 5 miles away, but I should be able to get there in a couple of days.

In the meantime, I hope you enjoyed the little bit of England today. More steps tomorrow!

Steps, Day 2

It's a beautiful day today, November 3, and our walk is going to be a bit longer. I did better on my steps so we're going to walk about 1.7 miles (or so). I thought we'd head over to Little Stukeley. It's a little village close to RAF Alconbury.

Here's Cherlyn and Rob's house, down at the end on the left, where the little silver car sits. That's their old car. They sold it just a couple of months ago. See the little grassy area on the right? That's a small field right across from them where they go out to play. Bobby, Michael and Grandpa played ball out there when we were there. There's a fence and gate at one end of it and it leads out to the fields, which are much further out to the right.

Here's the little field. Looking straight at it, next to the big tree in the back, is where that gate is. I believe, if I'm seeing properly, that it's rapeseed season. They grow it there in the spring and the fields are absolutely gorgeous. It's a member of the mustard flower so it should be easy for you to imagine fields and fields just covered in mustard flowers. Like I said, gorgeous.

I'm standing in their driveway, next to their car. The field is on my left and I'm ready to head down the street now. This is the way we went when we walked Bobby to school when we were there this past Spring. He'd ride his scooter and we'd walk with him. I'm so glad they asked us to watch the boys for them. What a great time.

We're at the end of their street now and this is School Way. Bobby's school is just to the right and across the street. You can just see the edges of some of the cars in the parking lot. We're going to turn left here.
Ah. School Way. Cherlyn told me yesterday that she just discovered a very popular walking area. If you go all the way down School Way, to where it ends, there's a field and a fence. You cross the fence and there's a trail that takes you up the hill (to the left) where you can then turn around and see the entire village. She sent photos and it was beautiful. There were leaves and Fall colors everywhere. We're not walking all the way down School, though.
We're turning right on Manor Lane. I think of this street as the big British knickers street. When we were here, there was a woman hanging out her wash most days. There were lots of British knickers. :o()
We went all the way down Manor, which has some beautiful flowers in some of the homes' gardens, by the way. Springtime is so pretty here. We're coming up to Rust Lane and we're going to turn left.
Left on Rust and it's going to take us to the Motorway. I believe we're going to be following some of the Great North Road, but it doesn't bear that name right here.
Off we go on Rust Lane. Doesn't everything look so pretty? I love that they're right in the middle of the country, even though they're pretty close to some large cities and towns. It doesn't look like things are as spread out as they are in the states.
We're coming up to a roundabout that will turn us in the direction we want to go . . . if we do it right. See the sign that says "The North?" That's what they've always called the northern part of England. Mike said that they referred to it that way in the Robin Hood movie he watched recently.
Roundabout! Watch the signs. Watch the traffic. Look out for other cars. Don't miss your exit.
We made our turn. This is the A1 I'm looking at. I believe I'm looking north.
Another roundabout! Agh! Cars are coming at me!!
Made it through the roundabout and now I'm on the road into Little Stukeley. At least I think I am.
Straight and narrow, with lots of pretty fields, pretty skies, pretty clouds. Like I said. It's a glorious day.
I believe we're getting close to the village.
Yes, here we are. This is a traffic calming measure. We're driving on the left side of the road and you'll see that it's blocked. If there's no one calming at us in the other direction, then we can move into the other lane and go. If there's someone coming towards us, then we have to yield to them. Cherlyn said that she thought it was because people were driving into the village too fast so this slows them down.
Here's Little Stukeley. If you blink, you'll miss it.
This is our stopping point. Look at the beautiful house with the thatched roof. Pretty, huh?
On the other corner (on the right) is this other very pretty house. My guess is these houses are very old. Like probably a couple of hundred years old.
And this one was on another corner. Another very old house in a very old country that, for some reason, seems to have a real hold on my heart. I hope you enjoyed the walk today. I did. See you tomorrow!

Steps, Day 1

I'm going to try something new. I don't know how long it'll last, but I thought it might motivate me to take more steps. I miss my daughter in England and I miss England. We both fell in love with it when we were there and we've been twice. I'm keeping track, via my pedometer, of the number of steps I take every day and I know approximately how many steps I take in a mile. Using these numbers, I'm going to walk in England when I take my steps. Not in actuality, unfortunately, but I can map out a walk and supply you (and me) with photos of my walks, courtesy of Googlemaps. So, here's my first walk, which I took on November 2.

I started out my walk at Cherlyn and Rob's house. That's theirs on the left. Cute, huh? I'm standing in the street with my back to where I'm going to go so I can show you their house. Time to turn around and start walking.

I walked down their short street and now I'm at the end of it. That's Bobby's old school there on the left. At the very end of the street you can see a chimney on the left side of the road. That's the chimney to The Manor, the greatest little pub around.

And here's the pub! We've had dinner there a few times and breakfast there once. It's a fun place and popular with the locals. The food is also delicious.

We'll walk just a little ways past The Manor and we're going to turn right at . . . The Maltings.

They have such interesting names for their streets, huh? We'll just meander down here. It's a beautiful day, which it was just about every day we were there last year and the year before.

These beautiful old barns are right on the lane. The one on the right looks quite old. There are a lot of brick buildings around and the thatched roofs are really cool.

Down where the road turns to the right is the old village church. From what I've read, (and if my memory serves me correctly) there are records showing that parts of this church were here in the 13th century. It's a beautiful church both inside and out.

Turning to the right now and we see one of the beautiful old houses, complete with a thatched roof. This village has been here since the 1200's and some of these houses are very, very old.

Looks like a couple of my photos got out of order. The one at the left is the very end of The Maltings, right at the beginning of the footpath leading to Polecat Lane.

This one is still on The Maltings. Makes me wonder how the googlemobile was able to get through here to take photos.

This one should be the middle one. Its the end of The Maltings and you can see the footpath off to the left.

We're now on the footpath that leads to Polecat Lane. I turned around and I'm looking towards The Maltings, from whence I just walked.

These next two were taken on Polecat Lane. Polecat Lane starts at the Great North Road and then dead-ends before The Maltings. That's where the footpath picks it up. There are a lot of footpaths around here.

At the very end you can see the the Great North Road. It's an ancient road that was used for coaches and post and such. There's also an Old North Road which runs right through Huntingdon. It was one of the main roads that the Romans built.

You can read more about the old Roman roads here. I love history so it's interesting to me.

We're on the Great North Road now, heading south towards Alconbury. If I turned around and went the other direction, I'd end up in Alconbury Weston. The two villages are related.

Here's the kissing gate leading to the footpath, that goes between Church Way and the Great North Road. We've traveled the footpath and now we're just outside the church. This footpath brings us to the opposite side of the churchyard from when we were on The Maltings.

We're now on Church Way at the end closest to the church. At the end of Church Way is the village pump. If we were to turn right, that would put us on . . .

High Street. It would take us to the village green and the Bridge Crossing Alconbury Brook. The bridge is mentioned in some books that were written in the 1200's.

We're not going to turn right, though. We're turning left onto Chapel Street. You can see The Manor way down at the end of the street.

We've walked down the street and now we're passing The Maltings again, right across from The Manor.

Just a little ways further and we're almost to The Paddocks; the home of Cherlyn, Rob, Bobby and Michael. Bobby's old school is just to the right of us in this photo. Just a little further . . .

And we're back to their street. That's their house way at the end. Our walk is over. We walked a little over a mile or so. It's kind of hard to be exact because I'm not sure how long the footpaths were. I'm guesstimating about 1000 ft.

I hope you enjoyed the walk. I did. Just wish I was there.