Chrishall to Great Chesterford.

My Uber taxi drops me off back in Chrishall. Large fields are crossed before a lane brings me to the next village, Elmdon.

 The house in front of me was previously The Carrier Inn, one of five pubs in the village at one time. Beer was safer than water. These agricultural settlements reached a peak population at the end of the 19th century before mechanisation made much of the labour force redundant and drove people to the towns. And now they are probably inhabited by workers from the city.

The Church of St. Nicholas is prominent above the village. 

The tower is C15th, but the rest of the church was rebuilt in the 19th century. I don’t find much of interest inside except for a C16th marble altar tomb and an embossed coffin lid. 

I stroll around King’s Lane …. some delightful buildings.

Once out of the village, little byways pass through the fields. I seem to be on the local dog walkers’ route. Everyone is happy on this glorious morning.

I wind my way up to the isolated church at Strethall, its tower just visible.

Small compared to others, it is plain inside with a splendid arched chancel. Much is C12th. The stained glass is Victorian, and the east window is so large that the structure of that wall has been compromised. An iron cross bar was inserted, but more recently, oak beams have been installed across the chancel for extra strength. Some of the pews are over 600 years old. I have been meaning to mention the tiles I’ve seen in the churches this week. Many have been encaustic tiles. Encaustic tiles were traditionally created using different colours of ceramic clay, with the pattern inlaid into the body of the tile. The different coloured clays can extend into the base tile by up to 6 millimetres. This means the patterns remain visible even after centuries of wear. I spent time in a tile museum in Ironbridge last year learning about this process. I wonder if these tiles originated in Coalbrookdale, Shropshire?

There is a hall and its farm nearby, and that is Strethall – all is peace and quiet. Even the narrow lanes have no traffic apart from a couple of cyclists out from London for the day.

The following field of beet is massive; my narrow path takes over 10 minutes to traverse, about half a mile. Sign of things to come?

Ahead is an equally massive and newly ploughed field, and I’m dreading crossing it. Thankfully, a narrow hedged strip has been preserved and what a wildlife corridor it proves. Full of birdsong and berries galore, as is the norm this year. Covies of partridges fly out as I progress—Roe deer disappear across the fields. This is what rambling is all about, but then the distant rumbling of the M11 slowly impinges on the senses.

You hear it long before you see it.

They have gone to a lot of expense to bridge over all the lanes and slip roads. A Flag of St. George decorates the railings – I wonder about the motive of placing it there. In the interests of safety for the motorists below, I remove it.

Over the bridge, a lane takes me into Great Chesterford. Sounds as though there is a Roman connection there. I don’t think that when this house was built, they would have expected a motorway to go past their back door.

The train to Cambridge is just down the road. Getting home is more tiring than the few miles I’ve done today.    My kittens are pleased to see me. I’m surprised they recognise me, as my hair is a tangle, having forgotten to take a comb on my travels.

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I think I am about halfway on the Icknield Way Path, Ivinghoe Beacon to Knettishall Heath, 106 miles. Thanks for sticking with me so far. I have probably followed some of the Icknield Way, but lots of it is lost in the mists of time. I certainly felt I was on an ancient way much of the time; there was that mystical atmosphere around. Whatever, it has made for an excellent LDW so far. It’s time to go home for a while, but I hope to be back before the end of September to finish it and join the Peddars Way on Knettishall Heath.