Chugging along from Achurch to church.

Other than being a bit miffed that the pub was closed, and the almost constant drizzle, I really enjoyed looking round Wadenhoe village. We topped up with water before setting off.

The first lock was almost straight away. Despite the lack of sun the scene still looked like an old Constable painting.

It seemed even more like an old Master's painting when we got a bit closer and had the cattle in the field by the river too. The church at Achurch! is St. John the Baptist.

The setting Lilford Lock is pretty nice with the trees surrounding. It would be even better if the brief show of the sun had continued.

The quite ornate bridge after the lock leads to Lilford Hall, that can barely be glimpsed through the trees. It seems that it is currently up for sale for £50 million. Mind you it is Grade I listed with 100 rooms and 350 acres of parkland. The earliest part dates from 1495, with the majority being added in 1635 and 1750.

At Upper Barnwell Lock the old Mill. It dates from the 1690's but was changed into a restaurant  in 1960's and then was completely refurbished and altered into a boutique hotel with restaurant in 2008. It was flooded a few years later but won honours for the restaurant. However it was closed in 2014 and was up for sale for just under a million pounds.

After passing under the modern A605 road bridge you come to the old bridge leading in to Oundle. It is another at a skew to the river. The first bridge was sited here in 1329. There have been several iterations since then, 1570 and 1835 for sure as a tablet from the former date was incorporated in the later. The current bridge dates from 1912 but now has a weight limit on it of 3 tonnes as the Council cannot afford the £750,000 to repair it.

After Cotterstock Lock there is the strange church of St. Andrew's. The original part of the church was Norman but the seemingly out of proportion chancel was added quite a while ago as it was built as the largest private college in 1338!

As we have progressed down the Nene we have noticed that there are an awful lot of herons and swans.However the swans seem to have many fewer cygnets than last year.Whether this is to do with being on a river and the heavy rains of a week or two ago, or just the number of swans competing we don't know. Last year on the canals many families seems to have 5,6,7 cygnets. On the Nene  this year they seem to have 1,2 or three!

The view of St Mary and All Saints church at Fotheringhay is quite beautiful as you pass down the river. I understand that the octagonal lantern tower was actually used like a 'lighthouse' to navigate through the old Rockingham Forest.

Fotheringhay road bridge is another that is askew to the flow of the river. The original bridge was built in 14 98 and was wooden. It was rebuilt in 1551 and 1581. The current bridge was built in 1722 and has been closed often when damaged by traffic on the top, rather than passing through.

We moored up just through the bridge, just by the mott of the old castle here. Just out of shot is a lump of masonry and brick that was originaly from the bailey or castle that was on top of the mound, and now enclosed by railings. The castle is 'famous' as it was where Richard III was born in 1452, at the home of the Duke of York. It was Richard III who was found under the car park in Leicester and we saw his tomb where he was re-interred as we passed through earlier this year. It is interesting to know that the 3rd Earl of Albermale briefly took the castle in 1221 and he was the grandson of the founder of the town where we live, Hedon. The manor and castle passed to David, King of Scotland for about a hundred years and years after it reverted to the English crown it was the place that Mary Queen of Scots was beheaded, after three stokes of the axe, in 1587.

The church is far more than would be expected in a little village, as it is today. There is really just half of the church left from that started to be built by Edward III. Beyond the current chancel was another chancel and a lady chapel. The church has a beautiful ceiling below the tower and has large windows making the building very bright.

The box pews and pulpit with the many windows give it a very open look. The stone memorial imitates another similar on the opposite side of the altar, that are dedicated to Richard Plantagenet and his son Edmund who both died at the Battle of Wakefield in 1460 and re-interred here in 1476. On the other side is a similar tomb to Edward 2nd Duke of York who died at the Battle of Agincourt in 1415.

The weather vane atop the church is a falcon with in a fetterlock. This was an early heraldic emblem of the House of York, before the White rose took over. A fetterlock was a 'D' shaped lock that clamped over the leg of a horse to stop it straying.