Walking Weekend
A town that’s so precious it became England’s first urban conservation area, Stamford’s sempiternal charm is just as appealing as the villages, stately homes and reserves that surround it.
GRACEFULLY UNSPOILT
ONCE ONE OF England’s richest towns, Stamford’s gold-stoned streets are still lined with fine old buildings. The town escaped heavy industry and wartime bombing, preserving coaching inns and Georgian mansions in rich, diverse countryside.
The first walk allows plenty of time for exploring Stamford before or afterwards: it’s short, but passes through four counties, looping along the river and up wooded tracks to the lovely village of Easton on the Hill. Here the 15th-century Priest’s House has a free-to-visit museum of village life. On the way back, the walk passes the ruin of Wothorpe Towers, once a grand lodge for nearby Burghley House, an impressive Elizabethan mansion.
Our second, longer walk explores graceful Burghley Park and follows the Hereward Way to an unusual nature reserve: Barnack Hills and Holes was once the site of busy medieval quarries and stone from here was used to build the cathedrals at Ely and Peterborough. It’s now home to orchids and other rare wildflowers. Awooded riverside path leads back into the heart of Stamford.
The word is…
Burghley House is one of our grandest Elizabethan houses, with two fine gardens (including the Garden of Surprises, inspired by astronomy and Classical civilisations), a Capability Brown-created deer park and a woodland adventure play park for the kid
