Get away for... THE WEEKEND!
Many years ago I wrote a book about the ‘undiscovered’ places of France; interesting locations not on the usual tourist trail. I’d been thinking whether we could find a few places like that in the UK. It wasn’t so easy! After a lot of head-scratching we came up with Peterborough and the Nene Valley. A quick glance at our Lonely Planet England reassured us, as there was no mention of anything in Peterborough or Northamptonshire either.
A phrase from our old Pearson’s which includes the River Nene, has always stuck in my head: ‘The Nene flows through a landscape which is a sort of throwback to a Yeoman England’. Willows, poplars and water lilies grace its banks, dragonflies hover, old watermills sleep in backwaters and honey-stone villages look out across buttercup-filled water meadows. It’s an Arcadian scene. There are touches of history, too: hints of the Gunpowder Plot and the scene of Mary Queen of Scots’ sad demise. The poet, John Clare, lived here and
