A Good Walk: Hambleton Peninsula, Rutland Water
Christopher Somerville
November 14 2015, 12:01am, The Times.
Upper Hambleton stood high and handsome on its green ridge this autumn morning, its rosy stone houses glowing in clear sunshine under a china-blue sky. It was the village’s hilltop position that saved it when the Gwash Valley was flooded in the 1970s to create the giant man-made lake of Rutland Water.
Ever-expanding Peterborough’s thirst for fresh water saw the villages of Middle and Nether Hambleton drowned beneath the reservoir’s rising waters, but their elevated neighbour escaped the tide. Now Upper Hambleton sits in solo splendour across the neck of a long peninsula extending into the great sheet of water that lies at the heart of Britain’s smallest county.
We found a pathway down to the water’s edge below the village and followed a gravelled shared-access track (for cyclists and pedestrians) along the northern shore of this peninsula. The far shore, a smother of trees, was splashed beautifully in scarlet, gold and green.
Rutland Water is famous for the number and variety of birds that spend the winter here. We watched great crested grebe ducking and diving in the steel-blue water. A flight of tufted duck, a couple of hundred strong, went beating across the lake in black-and-white flickers. Chestnut-headed pochard coasted close to the shore, and a little further out bobbed a group of goldeneye with glossy green heads and brilliant gold eyes. Everyday birds made marvellous by the power of binoculars and the clarity of so much autumn light over such vast stretches of water.
The track wound along the lake shore through the skirts of Armley Wood, where ash, oak and hazel leaves filtered the sunlight into translucent shards of lime and lemon. Beyond the wood the path rose among fields all a-clatter with a tractor and harvester reaping a crop of maize.
At the tip of the peninsula we turned back along the south shore, looking across to the spire at Edith Weston. Pairs of teenagers were scudding about in sailing dinghies, chivvied by instructors yelling from a rubber boat. On an isolated ness stood the Jacobean mansion of Old Hall, gabled and mullioned, sole survivor of the two drowned villages, marooned on the shore beside the water that swallowed them.
Getting there From A6003 roundabout just east of Oakham, follow A606 (“North Rutland Water”). In half a mile, right to Upper Hambleton.
Walk 5 miles, easy, OS Explorer 234. (Online map, more walks at christophersomerville.co.uk.) From The Finch’s Arms, left along village street. In 150m, opposite pillar box, left down drive (fingerpost) to lake shore. Right along shared-access trail, clockwise round peninsula. In 4½ miles pass driveway to Old Hall (899071); in a further 500m, right over stile (895075, yellow arrow). Up field to top corner (898076); cross successive stiles; narrow fenced path to Upper Hambleton.
Lesley holds an MSc in Executive Coaching from Ashridge Business school and she has 16 years commercial experience with Mars. Read More >
She is the author of ‘Coaching Outdoors; the essential guide to partnering with nature in your coaching conversations’.
Contact by calling +44 (0) 7799 581792 or email info@coachingoutdoors.com.