A trip to the Cambridgeshire riverside village of Hemingford Grey, on the outskirts of St Ives, feels like wandering into a fairytale land of creeper-covered manor houses and thatched cottages with roses around the door. One of my favourite walks runs through the village, following paths through woods and flowering hay meadows and beside the Great Ouse. The river twists through the landscape, splitting and merging to form islands, or shining out suddenly from behind a churchyard wall.
The loveliest thing about the church of Saint James is not its architecture (the now truncated spire was destroyed by a hurricane in 1741) so much as the views from its riverside churchyard. Left along the river is a particularly pretty view, through trees and reeds to a thatched cottage and boathouse. The churchyard gate, framed by tall Japanese anemones, leads to the yellow walls of the moss-roofed former Anchor pub, now just another picturesque cottage with thatch, half-timbering, and colour-washed bricks.
