31/12/16 - The Griffin, Chipping Warden - Millennium Way Stage 43

Distance - 10 Miles
Geocaches - 6
Walk Inspiration

A weather warning for fog on the last day of the year.  There is no choice but to head out.  I am committed to doing a walk per month on the Millennium Way, as I work my way through the 44 stages.  I cannot afford to fail on the penultimate leg and tomorrow will be too late.  A new month.  A new year.

Like many legs before it, this starts at a pub.  I spied the Griffin at Chipping Warden on Stage 42 and it looked a fine example of a great countryside pub.  I am sure it will provide suitable  refreshment after this ten mile monster - the longest of all the stages.

The walk is a figure of 8 in the largely flat Northamptonshire countryside.  The early stages share the route with a Battefield trail.  You have to love this country.  To the untrained eye, this may look like a pretty ordinary field but 500 years before I was born, it was the scene of a major battle in the War of the Roses.  There are information boards and signage to link this site with other battlesites (Egdehill, Cropredy) in the area.

Edgecote Battlefield.

There's also a handful of geocaches in the area.  In Northamptonshire, they don't like to give hints.  At the end of the walk, I am quite pleased with my haul of 6 found, 1xDNF.

If I had set off later, there could have been three pubs to visit.  Its a shame that I have to miss out on the three conies at Thorpe Mandeville.  It was a fine enough looking pub on its own, but the date on the sundial showed just how old the building could be.

Drovers Inn - The Three Conies

1622 - Hardly seems credible.

After the Church Micro Geocache, its over fields (given over to the production of electricity) to Culworth.  Another fine Church (alas, the Church Micro was the DNF) and the promise of another pub.  At 11am, I knew it would be too early and I head back onto the paths.

Little to report as I make my way to the apex of the figure of 8 on a long stretch of countryside.

The Centre of the Figure of 8

The walk does have one last surprise, the C18th Edgecote House and Church.  If it looks familiar, its because it was used in the 1995 adaptation of Pride and Prejudice on the BBC.

Sweeping into Edgcote

Pride and Prejudice

I arrive back at Chipping Warden at the pub friendly time of 12:15.  Change of boots and I am in for a first ever Marstons Bitter.  My hopes for the pub were met - a nice village boozer.  One couple eating, one bloke at the bar with the paper and another getting excited by the horse racing.

Marstons Bitter.  Paper Reader.

Fog permitting, the Millennium Way will be completed, on track, in Jan 2017.