Normanton Church

Normanton Church sits alone in a field near Corby, stranded like some kind of architectural accident. It's actually not an accident at all - the church was deliberately left standing when the Rutland Water reservoir flooded the village in the 1970s, and now it rises from the water on a little peninsula, completely isolated.

You can walk out to it along a causeway, which takes about fifteen minutes from the car park. The walk itself is the thing here. The church is tiny, Victorian, and locked most of the time, but that doesn't really matter. What matters is standing out there surrounded by water, looking back at the landscape, feeling the oddness of it all. In winter it's genuinely eerie. In summer it's pleasant enough, though the novelty wears off once you've realised you can't get inside.

It's worth a visit if you're staying nearby - say at Stamford Meadows Glamping, just up the road - as a thirty-minute detour between other activities. Don't plan your holiday around it. Families with young children might find the walk manageable but unspectacular. History types who care about the flooded village beneath the water will get more from it than most. Walkers will appreciate the broader reservoir circuit.

Free to visit. Allow an hour including the walk. Go on a clear day when the water reflects the sky properly - grey drizzle makes it look genuinely depressing.