Peterborough Ramblers Walk: Alwalton – 2 January 2025

Pictures by Tony Attwood, commentary by Ima Lostagain

Alwalton is one of those places that I love walks to start from basically because I love villages that are in the Domesday Book.  I suppose this is because I was brought up in Tottenham which for reasons I have never understood was not mentioned in the great tome, thus to my mind, reducing its validity.  In 1086 there was a manor in the village paying £7 a year rent

The Domesday Book does not explicitly detail the local population but says 20 houses were present suggesting there were about 70 people in the village then.   I did keep an eye out for them but they didn’t seem to be home.  However, there were two water mills and walking around the area I could see why.  It was indeed quite wet and watery thereabouts.

Anyway, we gathered and parked our cars in a dutiful and respectful manner, as befits a group of walkers who probably outnumbered the population of the village by 10 to one, although none came out to ask what we thought we were doing.   So instead we chatted to each other, sharing tales of wild escapades upon the entry to the New Year and that sort of thing.

There were I suppose some 20 or so of us, venturing forth upon 13th hour and a half, and I must say it was good to be back doing a full five miler for the first time in a long while.

This is not an area familiar to me and I must say I found it a really intriguing landscape.  I can remember nothing like it from my childhood in Tottenham, but I guess I didn’t get out much.

This is the sort of place that I imagine living there and just looking at the village and the river all the time – until of course the police are called and I would be told to move along because I was causing a nuisance.

Now I do find it rather strange that standing and looking can be deemed to be causing some sort of harm but taking photos isn’t.

Anyway as you can see from the pictures this village has a tower although I have no idea what the tower was for.  I rather suspect it was a 14th century look out for incoming alien aircraft or some such thing.

I mean really, what did people in days of yore actually need a structure like this for?  Was it for drying the hay, or perhaps it was a local lookout to see if the village was being invaded by the neighbouring territory?

Of course having done my homework I do know that Alwalton has a parish council elected by the residents of the parish who have registered on the electoral roll.

So maybe this is where they hold their council meetings.  Or it could be where they actually keep the electoral roll.  Or maybe they throw the roll out the window and watch it roll away.   Sadly I feel this is one of the mysteries that will not be resolved, for no sooner had I started to ponder than I was called upon to join the walk, and in the pictures, you can see us walking along a well-established footpath surrounded by trees.

And indeed tree-lined was a feature of the early part of the ramble making the walk seem ever more mysterious and strange.  Certainly, I never saw such sites in Tottenham, although I would ask you to note that in the picture above, we are walking forward and in the next  walking away.   I think this was due to a gravitational anomaly in the area and I must look this up.

Indeed I did have a feeling on this walk of a presence of something almost otherworldly, a sort of being from beyond that was looking down, or maybe just passing by, out of my eyesight by nevertheless there.

In fact this presence stayed with me and I felt I was dealing with it quite well until suddenly as we crossed a bridge I saw all these shadows of other beings, and managed to get a quick photograph of them before they scurried away.

I turned to ask the rest of the group what it was that was creating the shadows but they just patted me on the head and suggested I keep taking the pictures and it would all be all right.

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