Through Britain

This is a non-walking day. I've decided to do the section from Market Harborough to Leicester directly from Bury St Edmunds without going via London. The main snag with that is that all my walking clothes and rucksack are in London. Somehow I'll manage to do without them.

Much depends on the weather. If it rains I'll be largely unprotected. All I have in Suffolk is an old jacket which might once have been waterproof. The forecast indicates a good chance of rain so I must take a robust umbrella. The pointed end will stick out of the top of the very small rucksack we have in Suffolk, jeopardising any passer by who comes too close.

In one other way this is a watershed moment. For the first time I'm so far from home that I have to arrange an overnight stay. The plan is to travel to Market Harborough via Cambridge and Leicester by train. With time spent waiting for connections the journey will take just under three and a half hours. I've therefore booked in at the Market Harborough Travelodge and plan an early start on Saturday morning. As I intend to get back to Bury at a reasonable time on Saturday evening, I've booked myself on the 16.12 train from Leicester via Ely. With only one change that journey should take just under three hours.

The small rucksack will take only a change of clothes (in case I get soaked), the umbrella, the phone charger, my razor and toothbrush plus medicines and first aid essentials. I'll have to carry a separate bag for my water bottle and Saturday's lunch time snack.

Rose at 5.48 a.m. Ate my croissant and cinnamon bun with a cup of tea and thought it a very stodgy breakfast. Late in the day there was little choice at the bakery. Left hotel at 7.30 a.m. which should give me a safety margin for the 1612 at Leicester Station. Made a bad start by struggling to find the road near the station leading to Great Bowden. Missing it, I decided to head north on a road on the far side of the station. Danger signs indicated a concealed sharp drop just off the road to the right. Eventually I found the road barred by a padlocked gate. Still, I'd allowed time for the odd mistake.

Great Bowden, when I reached it, turned out to have a thriving centre with people having their breakfast on tables outside a cafe. Also there was a proper baker. I decided to top up my water supply with some fruit juice as the day looked set to be warm and dry.

As I approached Thorpe Langton, I encountered a local man with an accent I found difficult. We exchanged pleasantries and he then complained about a group of twenty people who'd rebuffed his attempts at conversation. I suggested they might have been foreigners but he insisted they were British. This put me under some pressure not to be labelled myself as standoffish. When I thought I'd been sufficiently friendly I told him I was walking the Roman Road to Leicester where I had to catch the 1612 train. His eyes widened as if he may not have believed me. We parted amicably.

Just beyond Thorpe Langton I overtook a boy walking his dog. He had a plastic sling which he used to fling a ball for the dog to catch. The dog then placed the ball on the path and lay flat on the ground. As the boy approached, the dog picked up the ball and ran down the path with it. I prepared to greet the boy but he opened the conversation himself in a very relaxed and easy manner. I asked him about the route immediately ahead which the map told me crossed a stream. The boy told me there was a ford but also a bridge beside the ford. The bridge had a hole in it but the boy thought it quite safe. I established that the boy played football for the Market Harborough Under 11 team in the midfield.

The path beyond the stream climbed upwards and a couple of runners passed me. A few people had taken to the path to walk their dogs. The other end of the track was accessible by road. Just beyond the road I went through the hamlet of Stanton Wyville. A road continued on rising ground but was deemed unsuitable for motor vehicles. The road turned into a track which climbed through fields of sheep and reached the Roman Road. To the right of the intersection the Roman Road soon became just a course marked on the map but not visible on the ground. To the left the road survived. Some sections were tracks, one very rough, but other sections were asphalted and used sparingly by traffic. I passed one or two walkers but it was mostly unpopulated.

It's hard to walk such a lengthy section of Roman Road without imagining conditions nearly 2000 years ago. Leicester was a Roman town called Ratae. Evidence has been found of a forum (open area for a market and public gatherings) and a basilica (building used for law courts, public assemblies and commerce) but no trace of a fort has so far been discovered. I thought that most of the traffic on the road would have been horse riders but the legions must have marched along it also. There would have been wagons to take supplies to the town and maybe a few chariots. Slaves would normally have walked and might have been sent on ahead to minister to their owner's requirements on his subsequent arrival. No one could now advocate slavery but the Romans must have thought it entirely normal that they didn't have to worry about servants' wages.

At Little Stretton I had a problem as I'd only photocopied those areas that I was to walk along. By not including neighbouring areas, none of the places indicated on the signposts meant anything to me except for Stoughton. Stoughton was nearer Leicester so I decided to go there passing to the north of Leicester Airport. This meant that I missed Great Stretton which, I later discovered, was on the Roman Road. Unhappily it was not on a the section I'd copied. This added a mile or two but, ultimately, this didn't matter.

I entered Leicester and made for the station. The ethnicity of the areas I walked through was mainly non-white. I passed a large mosque with four minarets and subsidiary buildings. Houses near to the mosque flew Palestinian flags. Most of the businesses I saw were run by non-whites. My understanding is that Ugandan Asians, when expelled by Idi Amin, were attracted by Leicester's knitting industry.

The journey home was made difficult by trespassers on the line near Peterborough. Our train left Peterborough but had to return there. There was no information to be had from the staff who, themselves, were kept in the dark by the emergency services called out to deal with the problem. For a while a night in Peterborough seemed a possibility but then, almost without notice, the train resumed its journey. In the end I was barely 45 minutes late when I reached Bury.

Distance today 18.13 miles; total 205.06.

At St Pancras Station the Booking Hall turned out to be a bar with a comfortable lounge in the next room. The station is used by East Midlands Railway. To make this a day trip I booked the 8.05 train but this was delayed by a signal failure, a not infrequent occurrence. However, the hold up was only about 20 minutes and I was able to start walking in Leicester around 10 o'clock.

Almost immediately I came upon a statue of Thomas Cook. He was born into a poor family in 1808. His father, a labourer, died when his son was four. Cook left school at 10 and became a gardener's boy. However, he continued his education at Sunday School. At 20 he left his apprenticeship as a cabinet maker to become an itinerant Baptist preacher. He supported the temperance movement. When walking 15 miles from his home to Leicester to attend a temperance meeting, he thought how marvellous it would be to harness the recent development of railways to serve the temperance movement. He organised a party of 485 members of the Leicester Temperance Society for an excursion from Leicester to Loughborough to attend a temperance meeting. Participants were charged one shilling each to cover the cost of hiring the train. That was in 1841. Later in the same year Cook set up as a bookseller and printer in Leicester. He ran two temperance hotels with his wife and mother. In 1845 he organised his first profit making excursion to Liverpool, Carnarvon and Mount Snowdon. He arranged tours of Scotland and sent 165,000 people to the Great Exhibition in London in 1851. In the same year he started to publish Cook's Excursionist. The statue outside the station marked the 150th anniversary of that first excursion in 1841.

My route took me past Abbey Park, Leicester's biggest park. The River Soar runs through it and the ruins of Leicester Abbey are located there. I crossed the A6 and, through suburban streets, reached the Leicester ring road (A563). Beyond it lay the Leicester suburb of Beaumont Leys. The village of Thurcaston came next after I'd crossed above the A46. As I left the village I crossed Rothley Brook a tributary of River Soar. At that moment the rain started in earnest. I'd already donned my waterproof jacket in response to the first drops. Now I had to put on my waterproof trousers as well.

Rothley has a station which I could see down below as I crossed above the railway line. At this point I turned sharp left towards Swithland without visiting Rothley village. Swithland was off my road to the left but I did skirt round the edge of Mountsorrel. I thought I was in for a spell of road walking having enjoyed the luxury of non-stop pavements. However, a good firm path took me forward on the far side of a hedge bordering the road. I took the turning to Stonehurst Farm. This road looked down on Mountsorrel station. This seemed inaccessible from the road but, from where I was, I could only see part of the platform and the Station sign. Later research indicated this railway dated back to 1860 and was mainly to serve the granite quarries that still exist in the area. However, there was a link to the main line at Barrow-upon-Soar. The railway had subsequently fallen into disuse and become buried under vegetation. A group of six volunteers set out to restore the line. The project caught the imagination of locals and soon a large number of local people helped with the work. The line is now open on occasional weekends.

The next village was Quorn and, after that, I proceeded on a path alongside the A6 which runs through Loughborough. I turned off it to reach the main line station.

Distance today 12.66; total 217.72.

I'd stayed overnight at the Loughborough Travelodge in the town centre. My intention was to walk to Nottingham Railway Station. I'd booked a ticket from there to Bury St Edmunds with one change at Ely.

Loughborough, the second biggest town in Leicestershire (after Leicester), has a University. It claims to have the country's largest concentration of world class sporting facilities. Loughborough also has the last bell foundry in the U.K. Bells made by John Taylor & Co hang in nearly every Cathedral in England and in thousands of Parish churches.

I rose at 5.15 a.m. and left the hotel at 6.30 a.m. when it was beginning to get light. I exited Loughborough through an area of Engineering Works. The road to Stanford-on-Soar was without pavements but there was a section on a field adjoining the road accessed through kissing gates. I crossed the River Soar and then passed under a railway bridge.

When I reached the village I sat on a bench facing the church. A local walking his dog at 7.30 greeted me. I now faced a lengthy section without pavements at a busy time of day. Also I needed to cross the A6006 just over half way to East Leake. This proved easier than I expected and I reached East Leake without incident. The Co-op there had the newspapers I wanted. British Gypsum, maker of plasterboard, has its headquarters in East Leake. Gypsum has been mined there since medieval times. As I left the village I saw Rushcliffe Halt on the Great Central Railway line. This is yet another station dependent on the efforts of volunteers.

The road to Gotham had a narrow pavement most of the way. The name is pronounced Goat-em and means Goat Home. The link with Gotham, pronounced Goth-am, being Batman's New York is tenuous. It's probably connected to Gotham's reputation for madness. One story has it that King John proposed to travel to Nottingham along the road through Gotham. Any road used by the King would become a public highway. The villagers feigned madness to deter the King from using that route. Madness was then thought to be infectious. Villagers built a fence around a bush to prevent a pigeon escaping. They also tried to drown an eel in a pond. It's unclear to me why the villagers didn't want their road to become a public highway. Perhaps that would have placed upon them an obligation to maintain the road.

Beyond Gotham the map indicated empty countryside until Clifton on the south bank of River Trent. Building work in progress appeared far sooner than I expected. Obviously my map, though purchased only recently, had no idea than a substantial block of land was to became Fairham. A new road had been constructed. A sign indicated that there'd be 3000 brand new homes. In selected homes underfloor heating and heat pumps would be fitted (at a price not disclosed by the advertisement). As I neared Clifton I saw that an entirely new Park and Ride had been constructed. An enormous car park there already accommodated many vehicles.

After walking through Clifton for a while I joined the A453. I'd seen this road, on the south side of the Trent, gradually converging with my path for some time. It led me past a University Campus and onto Clifton Bridge. I was now in Nottingham. Through busy roads and countless restaurants I made my way to the station. The rain held off until I was able to shelter within the station.

The journey home was fraught. Faulty trains or deficient signals determined that I had to go to Cambridge before travelling on to Bury St Edmunds.

Distance today 15.31 miles; total 233.03.