The straight way is not always the best. So to get to Dovedale, to the north, to assess some Duke of Edinburgh's Award groups, from Market Harborough I followed the River Welland towards Stamford, to the east.Market Harborough, a busy market town, just inside Leicestershire, was where the liberty bodice was pioneered. The town centre Church
reaches high above the timber frame of the seventeenth century grammar school, around which the daily bustle goes on. There were cycle lanes, when the road out of town widened, though there was some bizarre signing for unnecessary road crossings and "end of route" when it clearly carried on. It was not even early in the morning, so I'm sure it wasn't me. Though it was only late August, along the Welland Valley harvest was already in. A country patchwork of brown plough land, speckled fields of stubble and pasture greener than it had been for most of the summer, ran down to the flat-bottomed valley and up the hillside, across the water, into Northamptonshire. The road rose and fell without drama in this quintessentially English landscape. Steeples and towers of Churches along the valley sides are prominent.