The Road to Rutland...
...by motorcycle I turned right off the A427, just to the east of the A6 Market Harborough bypass, picking up the B664 northeastwards, on a similar course to the River Welland. The road then cuts out a wide bend in the river, passing straight over high ground between the spring line villages of Sutton Bassett and Weston by Welland. The high ground here is an outlier of the iron infused Jurrassic limestone, formerly quarried further east to feed the furnaces of steelworks at Corby. It is the iron that gives the rich golden hue to the stone in the cottages and churches that I passed through, village to village. These villages offer visual delights only surpassed by the beauty of the undulating landscape, as the road descends to cross the River Welland and its flood plain, to rise once more after Medbourne, only to descend once more to Stockerston, after which it crosses the Eye Brook over a narrow humpbacked bridge. Crossing the Welland I passed over the ancient bound...