No arrows point to this commanding view

Clophill, Bedfordshire Nature has attacked the motte and the ditches that surrounded the baileys of a knight's castle

There are no signs in the village, no arrows pointing the way. A footpath off the high street squeezes between two houses, crosses a stream, runs into open fields and there, in the green hillocks far away, we see the earthwork remains of Cainhoe Castle.

A knight of William the Conqueror's victorious army was given a third of the county, and chose to throw up a motte and three baileys here on the crest of a low ridge some time in the late 11th century. In the grassy, undulating foothills, anyone can play archaeologist among the inexplicable banks, troughs and wannabe ditches. The hollow stump of an ancient tree, looking like an extinct volcano, sits in a depressed bowl, surrounded by a garden of nettles.