Distance: around 7 miles

Difficulty of the terrain: medium

Get the route: via Ordnance Survey Maps

Walk across rolling countryside from the Warwickshire railway town of Rugby to the canal village of Braunston in Northamptonshire, home to the so called “Cathedral of the Canals”.

The Story

The Walk

Getting Back

Logistics Landscape Pilgrimage to the Cathedral of the Canals

These days if Northamptonshire is known for anything by people outside its boundaries it is as a place you stop off whilst in transit.

Most people living in the UK will have memories of pulling into Watford Gap Services on the M1, which was the country’s first ever motorway service station when it opened in 1959, and perhaps they will even have eaten at the Wimpy Burger bar there. The brand is an archaic rarity in this day and age. If taking the train to and from London, especially a slower cheaper one, they may have perhaps been laid over in Northampton or held up at Long Buckby. Or alternatively if heading up to Leicester, Nottingham or Sheffield, Wellingborough or Kettering will have served a similar function.

Goods as well, invariably appear to pass through Northamptonshire. Its towns are surrounded by rings of grey metal goods sheds out of which trundle endless lines of HGVs circulating goods across the entire country. The county is bisected by the often heavily clogged A14 which drains goods into the county from East Anglia’s container ports from where they flow into the rest of the county. While in the far north of the county, just down from Rugby stands the DIRFT (Daventry International Railway Freight Terminal), a vast isolated tangle of enormous sheds where many of the UK’s largest supermarkets have gigantic depots. Here trains chug up from the Channel Tunnel and ports across southern and eastern England to deposit their cargo.

Many of the more populous parts of the midlands are also critical cogs in the “just in time”, transportation, distribution and warehousing economy. However, it is Northamptonshire which seemingly plays the most critical part in the UK’s renal system. Perhaps it is fitting that this liver or pancreas shaped county has come to play such a critical role in circulating the goods around the county that sustain all of our lives? I saw The Great Bear an excellent artist’s film, freely available online, made by Jenny Holt in the late 2010s during a residency in Thrapston as part of the Animate Project’s “Work” programme, which gets under the skin of how the logistics industry functions, and how and why it has come to dominate and shape contemporary Northamptonshire.

Of course – as is ever the case – this is far from an entirely new state of affairs. Northamptonshire’s critical position in the south east of the midlands, and its network of valleys and “gaps” that enable relatively easy travel north and south, east and west, has long meant that it has enjoyed a critical place in British life. Just look at how many major battles during the mid-17th Century Civil Wars took place there.

Roughly mid-way between the Civil Wars and our own time – canals – the first industrial scale attempt to ensure a constant and reliable way of carrying goods in bulk criss crossed the Northamptonshire landscape. Much like elsewhere in the UK, and especially the midlands, this called into being all manner of service industries which were located in villages, hamlets and towns along the waterways. A late 18th and early 19th logistics industry if you like.

One of the villages to expand in this way, and definitely one of the most dramatic sited, is Braunston. Braunston, which today has a population of just under 2,000, is situated near the north west corner of Northamptonshire. Here an arm of what became the Grand Union Canal in the 1930s joined the Oxford Canal. The village which is sited on a rocky promontory is surrounded on three sides by canals. Its church, almost entirely rebuilt in the 1840s with a tall spire, stands on one end of the ridge overlooking where the waterways meet. This has led to it being christened the “cathedral of the canals”.

The village, whose older parts have a vaguely Cotswolds feel, a reminder that the tentacles of that sprawling Area of Outstanding Natural Beauty is not far away to the west, is also home to an enormous canal boat marina. Taking up two – enormous by British inland waterways standards – docks, the marina is home to numerous chandlers and boatyards. Definetly making the village a place of devotion for gongoozlers.

The Walk

This walk to Braunston from Rugby begins outside Rugby Railway Station.

The first couple of kilometres are almost entirely urban and suburban until you abruptly reach the edge of Rudby town.

On exiting the station on the townward side passing the main booking office, cross the forecourt.

Then turn right past a bus stop and walk along Murray Road for several hundred metres as it slopes uphill through a primarily residential area towards the town centre.

Presently you come to a roundabout.

Here turn left and cross over the nearest road on your left continuing to walk around the roundabout.

Take the next exit on your left and begin walking down Lower Hillmorton Road.

Follow this road for a couple of hundred metres, crossing over a bridge spanning the cutting of a disused railway line.

Some way after the bridge turn right and head along Boundary Road.

This is a relatively short, entirely residential street.

At the bottom of Boundary Road turn left. Walk along the major Hillmorton Road for several hundred metres.

Look out on your right for Fisher Avenue.

When you reach it, turn right and then slightly to your left. Follow the road down until you are standing at the bottom opposite the entrance to Ashlawn School.

When you reach it, turn right and then slightly to your left. Follow the road down until you are standing at the bottom opposite the entrance to Ashlawn School.

Having reached the road opposite the school, cross over to the side with the school. There are traffic lights located slightly to your right if it is busy whilst you are walking this stage.

Once on the same side of the road as the school, turn left.

After a short distance a footpath is visible leading into a snicket bounded by hedges to your right.

Walk down this snicket which passes allotments on your left and Ashlawn School’s playing fields on your right.

Presently you come to a concrete step after which stands a metal gate.

And once across it you are suddenly in open countryside.

Walk straight across the first field following a clear defined path towards a large coniferous bush and some farm buildings.

Down a slight slope you come to a gate.

Head through the gate and turn left, along a path leading between a hedgerow and a wooden fence.

The farmer who tends the land you are walking across has an incredibly strong signage game when it comes to marking out the footpath, so it should be fairly obvious where you should tread.

Turn right and follow the track down the field for quite some distance, heading steadily downhill along the line of the hedge.

You come to another homemade sign pointing left across a plank bridge over a ditch, into the adjacent field.

Walk diagonally aiming for the thicket of trees on the far side.

Here there is another helpful footpath sign atop a style, which leads onto another plank bridge across a brook which runs through the thicket.

There is another style on the other side of the bridge as well.

In some ways the two styles at either end of the little bridge have the feel of a frontier. And you would not be entirely wrong to think so. According to my Ordnance Survey app, the little stream marks the boundary between Warwickshire and Northamptonshire, and therefore the West and the East Midlands.

Once over the style you are in a small field, which had a small flock of sheep in it on the day that I walked the route.

Head more or less straight across the field and over a style on the far side. Here I clocked my first waymarking sign bearing the name of the recently abolished Northamptonshire County Council.

On the other wide of the style turn right.

Follow the path a short way and through a gap in the hedgerow.

Then take a sharp turn to your left and follow the hedgerow around the edge of a pretty big field.

Presently you come to a gate.

On the other side of the gate initially head around the edge of the field passing through another gateway into a larger field beyond.

Here you will see a farm on the far side of the field you have just entered.

Cross the field heading roughly in the direction of the farm.

To your left just after where the farmyard lies there is a gate.

Head through this gate and come out onto a track.

This track leads past the farm buildings on your right and slopes gently uphill passing a bungalow on your right on the way.

At the top exit through a gate onto a public road.

Turn left and head across a concrete bridge over the M45 motorway, which winds from southern Coventry across to the M1, converging with a few miles east of where you are standing.

Once over the bridge the road slopes downhill.

Soon after this point the road rises again up to a bridge across the Oxford Canal.

This is one of the canals – along with the Grand Union – that flows past Braunston.

On the other side of the canal keep walking along the side of the road past a large fishing club on your left.

Here you are nearing a tall ridge, Barby Hill, which reaches a maximum height of 155 metres.

The road begins to gently slope uphill as you approach it.

Presently you come to a fork in the road, where the public road continues on your left and turns into a farm track on your right.

Ahead of you is a large gap in the hedgerow into a field.

Walk up the bank and into this field.

You are now beginning the proper climb up the ridge.

In the field turn left and follow the edge along the line of the hedge walking uphill.

Just over halfway up the slope there is an opening on your left into the next field.

Head through this gap into the adjacent field.

Here more or less straight ahead of where you are standing is a footpath across the middle of the field.

Follow the footpath heading for a stand of trees near the top of a hillock on the ridge.

From your vantage point near the top of the hill you get a great view on your left back towards Rugby and the grey, anonymous, slightly ominous shed of the DIRFT (Daventry International Rail Freight Terminal) due east of the town.

Passing the trees at the top of the ridge, follow the line of the hedgerow on your right across several fields.

After some distance you reach another thicket.

At this point the path turns into a farm track, working its way through the trees and scrubby bushes.

Follow the farm track – which was exceedingly muddy when I walked the route near the beginning of February – for some distance. Part way along, you encounter a single bar swing metal gate put in to deter motor vehicles besides those used by the farmer.

Presently you come to a metal gate leading out onto a field. Next to it a footgate leads onto a well trodden path.

Take this well trodden path and walk along the edge of the field.

Soon you come to another metal gate which leads into a paddock on the edge of the village of Barby.

At the end of the paddock there is a wooden gate.

Having passed through the gate the footpath soon turns into a semi paved track, which is a relief after the muddy fields.

Follow this track for some distance in the direction of a gaunt concrete water tower standing on the edge of the village.

Nearing a road, if you look through a hedgerow on your right it is possible to glimpse a disused, dilapidated, but still largely intact windmill. The area has quite a few of them, no doubt encouraged by the countryside’s variation between wide shallow valleys and short steep ridges and hilltops.

Shortly after passing the remains of the windmill you reach a public road.

Turn right when you reach the end of the lane and join it.

Follow the road as it runs across the top of the ridge down an avenue of trees.

As the road begins to slope downhill look out for a gate on the left.

This leads off onto a section of the Barby Town Lands – an interesting 19th Century charitable body – which provides greenspace, and grants from the revenues raised through renting its lands, to the village.

Once in the field beyond the gate, turn slightly right and head towards a small copse at the bottom of a slope.

Walk through the gate into the copse.

Then follow the path through the trees to the far side.

Cross over the style on the far side.

Then head for the nearby gate into another patch of woodland.

Head through these trees as well.

Cross over a plank bridge and a style.

Before following the path along the edge of a boggy wildflower meadow.

On the far side cross a style and head into a grassy field.

Turn slightly left and walk across the field heading in the direction of a dell on the left hand side.

Walk down the side of the dell.

At the bottom of the dell, near where you have come down, there is a metal gate with a style next to it.

Go over the style.

Once on the other side turn left and walk along the bottom of a grassy slope leading up to the top of a ridge.

Presently you approach a style.

Once over the style, turning slightly to the left and walk diagonally across the field in the direction of a farm on the other side.

To the left of the farm there is a gate in the hedgerow, next to it is a style.

Cross over the style and into the field beyond.

Walk across the large field you are standing in keeping close to the hedgerow.

Partway across you come to another style, which you cross.

On the other side of the field there is a gateway and a further style leading out onto a lane.

Head over the lane and cross the style into the field beyond.

Follow the line of hedgerow across this field as well.

At the bottom of the field walk cross over a style into the field beyond.

From this point you get your first proper view of Braunston stretched out along its ridge in front of you.

Before the village lies a large grassy pasture known as Braunston Fields.

Walk down this gently undulating slope in the direction of the houses beyond.

Partyway down on your right, the line of the Oxford Canal curving around the village comes into view.

As you approach the bottom of Braunston Fields, head slightly to the left in the direction of the hedgerow marking the eastern boundary of the meadow.

At the bottom near the hedge there is a style leading onto a plank bridge across a little brook.

Crossing over this bridge the path takes a turn to the left.

Before soon turning right and leading you across a horse pasture towards the edge of a modern estate on the outskirts of the village.

There is an elasticated piece of wire serving as a makeshift gate part way across.

Once beyond this you soon approach the gate out of the fields into the village.

Heading into the modern estate you walk uphill a short way.

Then turn right.

Before turning left and walking up a cul-de-sac.

At the top of the cul-de-sac there is a snicket.

Walk down the snicket.

Turning left at the bottom you walk a very short distance through a somewhat older estate of modern houses.

Presently on your right there is another snicket.

Head down this snicket.

Which soon leads out onto the main road at the heart of the old village, which with its old yellow stone buildings has something of the feel of the Cotswolds.

From here to reach the canal marina, turn right, walking towards a building with an old fashion Hovis bread sign on it.

More or less opposite the sign, on the left hand side of the road, down the side of a very Cotswolds looking yellow stone cottage, there is a lane heading down hill.

Cross over the road and head down this lane.

This soon leads to a path which runs down a hill.

The marina soon becomes visible below.

You cross over the canal via a bridge, and the entrance to the marina, as well as the way onto the towpath, is just a little further on the other side.

Getting Back

Braunston is served by buses running between Daventry and Rugby. To return to Rugby I headed to “The Green Bus Stop”, so called, not because it’s on the village green (there is a bus shelter and a sign there, but they are apparently no longer in use), rather it is along the side of the Village Hall, near The Wheatsheaf Inn on a road called “The Green”. Shout out to the elder woman, who kindly told me that it is the side with the wooden shelter, not the bus stop pole; that the bus to Rugby comes down. I got the 14:41 D2 back to Rugby, which took about half an hour, and an interesting route back via the DIRFT. Once in central Rugby it was a 10 minute walk to the station, which is served by very frequent trains to the West Midlands conurbation and further north west, as well as southbound towards Northampton, Milton Keynes and London.