Kettering grew rich on shoes, like its neighbours in Northamptonshire, and its streets of red-brick terraces and old factories still tell the story. Today it is a busy market town on the A14, a convenient fuel stop between the Midlands and East Anglia, and the countryside around it hides some remarkable buildings.
Boughton House, a few miles north, is the home of the Duke of Buccleuch, and its French-style facade has earned it the nickname of the English Versailles. It is full of art and furniture, and the parkland around it is beautiful. Rushton Triangular Lodge, to the north-west, is a strange little building, built in the 1590s by Thomas Tresham, a Catholic, as a symbol of the Holy Trinity. Everything about it is based on the number three: three sides, three floors, three windows on each side, and inscriptions of thirty-three letters.
Wicksteed Park, on the edge of Kettering, is one of the oldest amusement parks in Britain, opened in the 1920s by a local engineer who believed children should have places to play. Its playground equipment was famous across the country.
The riding around Kettering is a mix of fast A-roads and lanes through the old Rockingham Forest, with gentle hills, stone villages and quiet roads. The A14 is busy with lorries, and the junctions around the town can be congested.
On a long day towards the Black Mountains, this is a practical halt rather than a sightseeing one: fuel by the A14 junctions, a coffee, a look at the map. But if you are ahead of schedule, ten minutes at the Triangular Lodge will give you something to puzzle over for the next hundred miles.