In 2024 we completed the Icknield Way Path, which may be the oldest road in England, and which runs from Ivinghoe Beacon, through Letchworth Garden City and into Cambridgeshire and ultimately Norfolk.
It was a windy and wet Spring day when we started the Icknield Way Path, walking up Ivinghoe Beacon, from its junction with the ancient Ridgeway. Normally we would have had extensive views as we walked along the ridge of Dunstable Downs. But the gliders were all tethered down and even a kite flyer would have risked losing control.
Fortunately, subsequent sections of the walk enjoyed better weather. It is difficult to avoid the new housebuilding in Bedfordshire, but the path skirts round, or, in some cases, on well-landscaped routes through, the estates. Once in Hertfordshire, sections of the Icknield Way are shared with the Chiltern Way, which we covered the previous year. But you never tire of the tramp up Telegraph Hill, with the old lane worn down by centuries of horses and carts.
The origins of the Icknield Way are lost in the mists of time, but it is thought to date back to
Neolithic times. Whether it is linked to the Iceni tribe, ruled by Queen Boudicca, is more speculative. It was a trade route, linking East Anglia to Berkshire and Wiltshire, although the modern path does not extend so far west. Some roads, including through Letchworth, have subsumed the route of the old path, and walkers are diverted off it at times.
The landscape changed as we walked further north and east into Cambridgeshire and Suffolk, although we never had a flat walking day. As we neared the end, at Knettishall Heath, where the Peddars Way continues on to the Norfolk coast, we had a few lengthy legs in order to finish the walk before the clocks changed, staying overnight to cover the last two on concurrent days.
