Note 170 — Chapter XI

Haslingfield (which is more directly reached from Cambridge by the Barton Road) has a fine and spacious church of the fourteenth century, the steeple being of special merit. Above it rises steeply the eastern extremity of a chalk spur to the height of 220 feet. From the summit, though so low, we get one of the widest panoramic views in England, embracing the whole valley of the Cam. "Ashwell Bush,"[170] which marks the source of the river, is conspicuous on a hill some ten miles to the south-westward, and Ely Cathedral, just beyond its junction with the Ouse, may be seen, twice as far away to the north; Cambridge, with its spires and pinnacles, lying between, five or six miles distant. Our eastward limit of vision is the long line of the East Anglian Heights, from Swaffham steeple[171] on their northernmost visible swell, twenty miles away, to the far-off jut of Sharpinhoe, near Dunstable, more than thirty miles in the opposite direction. Beneath us, in the valley, steeple after steeple rises amid its village elms, dotting the landscape like knots in net-work. No fewer than eighty of these can be made out, the most conspicuous being the cruciform church of Triplow.[172]