Our attempted walk from Northampton to Daventry... accidentally via the M1..

Today Karl, Emma and I went to meet Lars in Northampton and attempt to walk from Nothampton to Daventry to find the source of the river Nene.

I know what you're thinking- "oh, well, that sounds like a nice country walk, you might even get a tan! and it should be pretty easy as all you have to do is follow the river back to it's source."

Yeah, yesterday when I rang my mum and told her of our plans that is what I said too. And she scoffed at me.
My response to which was "well, we have an OS map so we won't get lost".
Touche.
I set myself right up there.

We started out by getting cake a hot chocolate- as no-one can walk 12 miles on an empty stomach.
We met Lars, and we walked onto the Nene way- which is a footpath that runs alongside the river and is clearly marked.


So it was all going very well for about 200m and then the signposts stopped saying "Nene way"- Come on Northampton council you have to at least give us a sporting chance?!
We figured it out and we did the first 2 miles or so admirably and in excellent time- it was cloudy, and warming up and the birds were singing and the sky was grey as normal- all excellent- as you can see:

Ok, so all going very well- then we run out of both River and path- the map tells us to walk though an industrial park and then we have the option to walk along the main road (noisy, smelly, but easy) or to take a left and walk along a footpath (pretty, quiet, what we came out for).
We went left.

Unfortunately we were
a) further on than we thought (actually, only 1/2 a mile from the village we ended up in 2 hours and 5 miles later)
b) on a housing estate that was too new to be on the map.
c) following directions given to us by an idiot.

We took the left, ended up on the hosing estate- and popped into the show home office where the lady assured us we needed to walk straight down, through the farm and onto the footpath there.
We did not.
But this is to be figured out in 5 miles time. Don't let me ruin this for

 you...

So, we take the footpath- here is Lars to prove it:

All very nice and sensible.
We go through the farm- which appears to be marked on the map as expected (Wrong farm) and follow the extremely muddy footpath at the other end:

OK- all going pretty well.
This is also when it started to rain lightly.
We didn't mind it to be honest as it was so warm and humid a little bit of rain was nice and refreshing.
We kept walking and came out in a field, more footpath sights , river (or so we thought) to the right of us- all going swimmingly well.. and then we came to this:

thats right- A lock.
The footpath met the road- which we were expecting, however, no lock was marked on the map.
Unlike the housing estate we couldn't use the excuse that it was too new.

We decided to walk on the roadside and look for signposts to help us work out where we'd gone wrong- after almost an hours walking- eventually we thought we'd fixed the issue and walked along the footpath by a busy A road. We followed it and followed it and followed it.
And then the signpost said "M1 Northampton"

This meant 2 things:
1) we couldn't walk that way anymore
2) we'd managed to walk out of northampton- and no-one could take that way from us!

We got the map out and the weather decided that was an excellent time to bucket down.
We wondered about a bit and came across this sign:
I've never been so please to see a road sign for Daventry in all my life!
Sooooo.. off we went- Lars managed to locate us on the map and we took a footpath through a field- rather than walking towards the M1 in the pouring rain.

Look at it.
That is pretty heavy.
We were all soaked to the bone- and everyone else's glasses were all steamed up.

We finally managed to find a village- and we walked round and round trying to find a pub.
Every time Lars saw a for sale sign, or an outside lamp or a flag he got excited and thought it was a pub.
We even considered taking a house viewing to get out of the rain.
In the end we ended up in a bus stop-shed thing with the map.
Success- there was a pub by the church with a spire (yeah, I know my map shit!) so we headed for the church- only to get there and find it was closed for refurbishment.
We were given another set of crap directions by the landlady to another pub on the other side of the village.
We stopped off in the shop for better directions on the way.

This is where we had ended up:



We went to the Cromwell Cottage- and it was lovely- for a start it was warm, had food and the staff didn't mind us taking our shoes off or putting our coats on the radiators.

We had some drinks and dinner and all cheered up and thawed out a bit.
The food was really really lovely- I'd go there again- but perhaps using a more direct route.
After our food and drinkies we decided to see how far we'd walked-- We worked out roughly that we'd done more than 6 miles- so if we'd been going the right way we'd have been over 1/2 way to Daventry- but as it was we were 3 miles from our starting point having walked more than double that!
We realised it was too rainy and getting too late to get much further, and we were pretty soaked though so we took the bus back to Northampton- which took about 10 minutes.
Gutting.
lol

I'm home and just about thawed out.
A cuppa wouldn't go amiss mind.