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I completed this walk yesterday travelling west from Daventry. It's a good walk, although the main issue for it (when I did it at least) was the lack of care by farmers in keeping the Rights of Way (RoW) maintained across their fields. Some of the route has been poorly plotted in the supplied GPX file, and it is borderline in need of a new and more accurate route plotting, but given it didn't cause any real concerns with navigation I think merely making people aware of the poor plotting is enough. There is an excellent pub at Flecknoe for refreshments which is about a third of the way in via this direction. The fast A425 bypass at the Southam end requires heightened attention to cross safely.

The route takes you out of Daventry fairly quickly, up and over the A45 via the 'curly wurly' pedestrian bridge (photo 1). You then walk alongside a new housing estate, and then seemingly strangely head back towards Daventry alongside the busy A425 for 3-400m until you reach the roundabout and take the first exit along Browns Road next to the local sports park and tip. It's at the end of Browns Road where the first small issue with the plotted route exists in that the plotted RoW has 'Private' signs put up. The alternative through Kentle Wood is obvious however (photo 2) and takes you on a nice and short diversion.

Leaving Kentle Wood behind, the route opens up to give fantastic views over to Bush Hill, Flecknoe and Warwickshire (photo 3). After this view, the route begins with it's first challenges in navigation due to the non existent given RoW across agricultural land and the sheer size of the large freshly ploughed ridges (photo 4). It was obvious the ploughing was done very recently so maybe the given RoW might return after some time, although it's difficult to imagine. The one mitigating factor was at least the farmers left a strip of land around the perimeter of these fields which meant we could walk relatively easily around the perimeters to follow the route - albeit by taking a slightly longer.

The field perimeter diversions ended once we got past Miry Bridge, and after that the route was relatively easy to follow all the way into Flecknoe. I strongly recommend The Old Olive Bush pub in Flecknoe for refreshments. Here the landlady told us she would be willing to be flexible on opening times by prior arrangement, not something I was expecting but very hospitable. Leaving Flecknoe you re-join the path (photo 7) to take you out of the village and onto to the biggest challenge.

After leaving Flecknoe, the route towards the canal sees a return of the aforementioned roughly ploughed fields and missing RoW (photo 8). Unlike the previous examples on the approach to Flecknoe, there is no perimeter path to come to your rescue leaving no alternative but to stick to the given RoW and hop from ridge to ridge - very heavy going across a sticky clay soil and the main reason I can't give this route any more than three stars.

Reaching the Oxford Canal (photo 9) was a welcome relief to the ridge hopping, even if the towpath which takes up approx. a quarter of the route was eroding in places (photo 10). There is one bridge to cross on the towpath at Napton Junction (photo 11) and when you finally reach the end of the canal section there is a staircase to take you up to the road (photo 12).

After a short 10m stretch of road walking alongside the busy A425 and past the old Bridge pub which is now just private residences, the route takes you along the Millennium Way towards Stockton. On the way to Stockton the route crosses a shorter footpath to get to Southam and the part of me that was tired from the earlier heavy going wished that we took that shorter route, but the village of Stockton is quite pleasant and I can sort of see what the designers of the route were doing by taking you along this longer diversion.

The route leaves Stockton via some alleyways to the rear of properties and sections of it were fairly overgrown (photo 14) in January, so might be more difficult in summer if not maintained. The final approach to Southam was fairly straightforward, although crossing the fast and busy Southam bypass requires some care. After crossing though it's a quick route into the town.

Apart from the aforementioned RoW challenges, there are the usual rural gates, footbridges, stiles and steps to negotiate. It is doable, and I can recommend it as a Slow Way. It's just a real shame about some of the agricultural RoW which in my opinion really let the walk down. If these issues were fixed i'd give the route four stars.

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