Greensand Ridge walk, 16.7 miles

22 June 2019

Hai came up with the idea a while back of walking the Greensand Ridge, a 40-mile long distance trail that runs from Leighton Buzzard to the village of Gamlingay in Cambridgeshire. A small group of us – me, Matt, Hai and two of Hai’s friends from King’s College – tackled the first stretch on a Saturday in late June, intending to walk from Leighton Buzzard as far as the little station at Millbrook (slightly off the trail but we wanted to do the thing by public transport). It was a reasonably hot day and was in the peak of the hayfever season, making it a dubious decision on my part to go at all. Anyway. I fancied getting out for a walk with friends to reduce time spent sitting around, scrolling through social media etc, so went.

We took the train to Leighton Buzzard and walked the short distance to the canal to join the beginning of the trail. The route follows the canal for a bit before branching off across a meadow towards Heath and Reach and the Rushmere Country Park (where we got slightly lost). We passed Rammamere farm (where there was some particularly b*stard pollen) and scuttled across the A5. The trail passes through more fields and woods and turns east towards the village of Woburn. By the time we reached Woburn my hayfever was kicking in and I was becoming less enthusiastic about the whole idea. The trail branches off through a horrid field (not pictured) which was full of cut grass at the time we crossed it and where, to add insult to injury, Matt and Hai stopped in full sun for several minutes to have a look at the route.

We walked through many fields of this type

The trail crosses the Woburn estate, where we got good views of Woburn Abbey and the lake. After leaving the deer park, we sat down by a field to eat our lunch and apply suncream. We started up again and walked on through Eversholt and along some interminable-seeming bridleways. I was losing enthusiasm by this time and took advantage of a map stop to moot the idea that I might cut the walk short and walk to Ridgmont station, the nearest station on the Bletchley to Bedford line. I ended up being persuaded to continue as far as Lidlington, though by the time we got there I was lagging some way behind the others and feeling somewhat dehydrated, as well as itchy. Everyone else decided they were OK with finishing at Lidlington too, so we headed for the station, after having walked around 16.5 miles.

I was delighted to find that Lidlington has a village shop, where I bought more water and an ice cream, though none of the others seemed in need of either (curious, surely). We then unfortunately had about an hour’s wait for a train, though I suppose we were at least sitting down.

Woburn Abbey and lake

There turned out to have been a re-routing of the Greensand Ridge a few years ago, supposedly to avoid a dangerous road crossing on the A507, which means the current route, through Ridgmont, diverges from the route on the OS map. My companions were sufficiently purist to want to follow the original route, though this proved less than ideal and included a struggle through a particularly trying overgrown field and then a scramble through a hedge.

The walk pretty much knocked me out for the rest of the weekend – I don’t think I stopped feeling pollen-infested until Monday morning. Spent Sunday in my flat with the curtains drawn.

Our route shown in red - starting point in Leighton Buzzard at the bottom:

Kelly's Kitchen

My eye was caught by a recent Motorway Services Online tweet referring to Kelly’s Kitchen, as I’d idly wondered how Kelly’s Kitchen roundabout, on the southern edge of MK had come by its name.

Kelly’s Kitchen was evidently a short-lived chain of roadside eateries, I assume along the lines of the Happy Eater and the Little Chef. The logo was evidently this cheery-looking lady. I’ve no memory of them, though that’s probably not surprising as it doesn’t sound as though they existed for very long. It sounds from the Motorway Services online article as though they were created as a rival to Little Chef, albeit not a very successful one as they were rapidly taken over and became LCs.

I had a look at Google Maps to see where this restaurant would have been. It was on the 'island' formed by the old alignment of the A5 (Watling Street), which goes through Fenny Stratford, and the newer dual carriageway, which bypasses it.

Kelly's Kitchen roundabout; black line shows alignment of old A5

As of today, Street View is still showing the boarded-up former Little Chef (and even more former Kelly's Kitchen) building, which was apparently closed and demolished in 2012 (according to this, it stopped being a Kelly's Kitchen in 1991). In reality, the building has now gone and there's a double-decker McDonalds on the site.

Disused tube station outing

1 June 2019

Disused tube stations, eh? Who doesn’t love those. And disused railways, roads etc. Luckily Ray does too, so in early June we had a day in London checking out former tube station buildings. There are evidently all manner of below ground disused bits, but you have to go on special tours to see those, organized by the London Transport Museum’s ‘Hidden London’ programme.

We’d both watched a number of YouTube videos on the topic of old tube stations, in particular two engaging short films by Geoff Marshall (Part 1 below).



We got round five former stations over the course of the day, with stops/travelling in between.

1.   Marlborough Road 
In St John's Wood, on the junction of Finchley Road and Queen's Grove. We started the day with a second breakfast at Bill’s on Baker Street, and then walked north-west past Regents' Park and Lord's to locate this building. This station was closed in 1939 following the construction of some new deep-level then-Bakerloo (now Jubilee) Line tunnels and subsequent re-routing of trains through them. This page has a photo of the station when it was in use as a passenger station, and in its later incarnation as a Chinese restaurant. According to the Wikipedia entry, it now houses some sort of substation; Geoff Marshall's video also notes that it's used as an emergency escape route from the Underground (as many of these old buildings seem to be).

2.  Hyde Park Corner
HPC tube station does obviously still exist, but it no longer has any above-ground buildings. The building went out of use in the early 1930s when a sub-surface ticket hall was built. It's now part of the Wellesley Hotel. Apparently, there's an emergency stairway inside that connects to the platforms. Difficult to find a photo of the old station building in use, but someone has posted on Flickr a still from a 1930 film showing it.

The building, like a number of tube stations, was designed by architect Leslie Green. The 'ox-blood' red tiles are characteristic of Green's stations.

3. Brompton Road
Further down Knightsbridge. It's on a quiet side street near the Brompton Oratory - took us a while to locate it. This one was closed in 1934. It was subsequently owned by the Ministry of Defence up until 2014, when it was apparently sold to a private buyer.

4.  Down Street
Down another side street, this one off Piccadilly. Closed in 1932. Apparently used as a bunker by Churchill and his War Cabinet during WWII.

5. York Road 
This one's behind King's Cross, so a bit of a journey from the previous three. Before visiting it, we had a delicious lunch in Kimchee, part of the posh new development there.

Amazing what you don't notice. I must have walked past this building before, but clearly never clocked that it was a former station. This one closed in 1932. Its re-opening seems to have been discussed as part of the King's Cross Central project, but it's hard to imagine that this is likely in reality.

All five of the stations we visited - or station building, in the case of Hyde Park Corner - were closed in the 1930s, so there was evidently some sort of programme of changes that went on then.

The day we went was a particularly fine day – in fact so warm that I tried out my first ever iced latte.

Running

A redway

Running. Until this winter, I’d barely run since school and in recent years had dismissed running as the preserve of strange sinewy obsessives who wanted to collapse prematurely from a heart attack/have to have a hip replacement at 50. The fact that several keen runners I have known always seemed to be nursing injuries didn’t help. However, this January I threw previous reservations to the wind and joined a beginners' running course run by Milton Keynes-based club Redway Runners, an impressively well-organised outfit of over 2000 members. The name of the club refers to the mixed-use recreational dark red-tarmacked paths that criss-cross MK.

The motivation was a desire to improve my cardio fitness, prompted partly by the struggle I’d had getting up Snowdon last June. While I do walk regularly, and walking is great, there’s only so much I can do to stretch myself sufficiently several times a week as Milton Keynes is relatively flat. As I don’t like gyms and can never really seem to get going with cycling, and as a number of people at work had recommended the Redway Runners, I decided to give them a go, so signed up for the 6pm Tuesday course starting the second week in January.

Although I didn't manage to attend every session, I attended most of them and found the group leads very encouraging, particularly Lisa C who was often responsible for the 'tail' and assured me that the coolest place to be was at the back (just as well). The club operates a great system for beginners runs – as well as somebody leading, there’s always a tail runner to ensure no one is left behind, and faster runners have to ‘loop back’ if the group gets too spread out to allow the group to bunch back together.

Redway Runners January 2019 beginners 'graduation' - me circled

The 10-week ‘course’ ended with the group – as well as all the other beginners groups; there were 6 or 7 – doing the Milton Keynes 5K parkrun on Saturday 30th at Willen Lake. Hai had kindly offered a while back to run with me, which worked quite well though I suspect she might have liked to go faster at certain points. My priority, however, was maintaining a constant slow speed with the intention of avoiding having to walk – albeit that the group leaders had assured us beforehand that it didn’t matter if we did have to walk bits. In the event, I managed to get the whole way round without walking, which I was very pleased about.

My time – I’m not proud – was 45 minutes. Never come 840th in anything before. I was cheered to learn that there were evidently 63 people who came AFTER me, though realise some of them may have been walking the route.

A number of photos were taken, most of the ones I've located highly unflattering. Here's one such.

Very taken with the parkrun idea. The Milton Keynes parkrun is a pleasant single-lap route taking in the canal broadwalk, passing the Peace Pagoda and then doing a circuit of Willen Lake. Planning to have a go at the Reading parkrun this coming weekend.

Redway Runners have a whole load of group runs every week, aimed at runners of varying speeds. There are 'step up' runs several times a week for newly-graduated beginners, plus 'gentle step ups' for those of a particularly sedate speed (40+ minutes parkrun time). I've already been out on a couple of the latter and quite enjoyed them. The club seems to have runners of a whole range of ages, sizes and speeds, which is really encouraging. I had some reservations about taking up running at 50 but so far all seems good, and I am mindful of not rushing into it headlong and overdoing it (frankly that's not all that likely; I have no problem in adopting a 'moderation' approach to exercise, unlike to, say, chocolate biscuits). My boss Judith started running only around 10 years ago and is now a keen triathlete who has won her age category at the Ironman Wales for the past two years. I’ve no intention of doing triathlons, but it’s certainly encouraging to know that you can safely take up running at any age.

Walk in Maidenhead, about 5 miles

Sunday 10 March

Another walk with Ray. We'd actually planned a while back to do the route of the Maidenhead Boundary Walk, a circular walk of about 14 miles, but wimped out of that. We also had to make an early diversion to Ray's employer's property to remove some branches from the road after a tree had fallen in the heavy winds. After that we went over to Norden Farm for a cup of tea and a sit down - I'm sure I remember there being a much better cake selection the last time we were there, but on this occasion had to content myself with a Stroopwafel.

After refreshments, we parked on Bridle Road and turned down Harrow Road past Furze Platt station (a stop on the branch line between Maidenhead and Marlow) and what was the Farmers Boy pub, now closed. Came out onto Cookham Road almost opposite the parade of shops that used to contain a Ritz Video, where Ray and I rented a LOT of Star Trek Deep Space Nine episodes at one point in the past. Turned right onto Garretts Lane, which soon becomes a footpath leading onto North Town Moor. We followed footpaths for a while before coming out onto Ray Mill Road West.

This part of Maidenhead has a whole heap of roads with ‘Ray’ in the title: Ray Mill Roads West and East; Ray Park Avenue, Ray Lea Road, Ray Drive, Ray Street; the charmingly-named In The Ray. There’s a biggish house Ray Lodge, now converted into flats. I lived briefly (before falling out with the other tenants) at Ray Lodge Mews in the early 1990s. A brief bit of digging suggests that ‘Ray’ was the surname of a once-prominent local family.

We walked to Boulter's Lock and crossed over onto Ray Mill Island (there the Rays are again). I didn’t know, but there’s been quite a bit of development here on this stretch between the Thames and the new(ish) Jubilee River – there’s a new footbridge and a shedload of new houses and flats ('Taplow Riverside'). As well as all the housing there are also some nice new pedestrian walkways. We spent quite a while mooching around here.

The new footbridge

Walkway and the Jubilee River

Housing at Taplow Riverside

We walked past what used to be Skindles and is now posh new housing and a posh-looking restaurant called ‘Roux at Skindles’. When I lived in Maidenhead in the early 1990s it housed the Studio Valbonne nightclub, where I clubbed a few times in the days when I did such things. The club’s heyday was way before my time; this source has some interesting snippets about its glamorous history. The new Roux restaurant's Skindles History page notes that ‘in the 1990s, Skindles became a rundown venue hosting discos’ which sounds about right from my memory. It closed in the mid-1990s and the building stood empty for 20 years before being bought up for redevelopment.

We walked into the town centre via Guards Club Park. Access to the island is closed at this time of year because of nesting birds. We had lunch at Funkywood.

The footbridge leading to Guards Club Island

Our route shown in red. It doesn't show as circular because I stopped the tracker when we stopped for lunch.

But here's the rest of it. After leaving the restaurant we walked through Maidenhead's uninspiring town centre (though it's not as bad as Bedford's), across Kidwells Park and along roads back to Ray's car.

Walk around Burchetts Green and Littlewick Green, 8.5 miles

Saturday 12 January

Weekend walk with Ray, christening the ’50 Walks in Berkshire and Buckinghamshire’ book that I’d bought myself for Christmas (have definitely reached middle age). We ended up combining two walks in the book: the ‘Around Burchetts Green’ walk and the ‘Littlewick Green and Maidenhead Thicket’ walk.

We parked again at the Butterfly Trail car park and joined the walk route at Robin Hood’s Arbour. Maidenhead Thicket was, apparently, notorious for highwaymen in olden times, and at one time outlaws in general were apparently known as ‘Robin Hoods’. Robin Hood’s Arbour is an Iron Age earthwork. Ray reminisced somewhat bitterly about how, as a small boy, he had been sold a longish walk to RHA under the guise of its being a ‘fort’, which had led him to expect battlements, drawbridges etc, rather than underwhelming humps and ditches.

We followed the path to Stubbings House Lodge, crossed the road and followed the footpath across fields to the posh village of Burchetts Green. We crossed the road by The Crown and headed up Hall Place Lane. We stopped briefly by a large white house called the Dower House for Ray to Google what this actually meant – it seems that the term referred to the house on an estate that was gifted to the widow of the estate owner after he had died, presumably to allow her eldest son to move into the big house. Doesn’t seem a bad deal.

House with dovecote, Burchetts Green

At the end of the lane, we crossed a field and headed down the drive towards Hall Place, a red-brick Georgian mansion that forms the centrepiece of the Berkshire College of Agriculture.

Crossing a field

Hall Place

We skirted round to the right of Hall Place and walked along North Drive to the statue of Diana, before turning briefly left and then right across fields towards woodland (High Wood). We continued through the small wood to its end where the book told us to enjoy the views north over the Thames Valley, so we did briefly. Then back through more of the grounds of BCA where we turned right and passed the Dew Drop Inn before entering Ashley Hill Forest.

Walking through High Wood

Ray by a carved wooden thing

In Ashley Hill Forest

There seems to be a single house at the top of Ashley Hill, an isolated property by UK standards. As a lad, Ray used to be friendly with the son of the landlord of the Dew Drop Inn, and he and this boy would then enjoy exploring around what was then apparently some sort of abandoned hunting lodge. It’s clearly been rebuilt since then as a large though architecturally uninteresting private house. I took a picture of its gates.

Gates to 'Clifton'

Aerial view of Ashley Hill, showing 'Clifton'

We came down Ashley Hill by a different path and made our way back to Burchetts Green. From there, we made our way south, crossing the A4, to the village of Littlewick Green. Have driven past signs to this village for over 20 years but never been in to the village before. It’s very attractive. We stopped at The Cricketers for a light lunch.

Littlewick Green

After lunch, we headed south out of the village and turned left along a tarmac track running alongside fields, coming out on Cherry Garden Lane. Turned left and headed north back to the A4 and then through the Thicket back to the car.

Our route shown in red:

My Birthday 2018

Well, still can’t quite believe I’m 50, though I’m slightly more reconciled to it than I was for the few months – OK, few years – beforehand, largely through, I don’t know, having no choice and all. These photos sum up my mental turmoil beforehand.

At the beginning of 2018, Ruth and I had been entertaining thoughts of booking some significant trip to mark my half-century, but unsurprisingly given our collective feet-dragging over holidays, that didn't quite happen. We did have a bit of a peruse of Hurtigruten’s Nordic cruises, but couldn’t quite decide on the best time of year to go. The Snowdonia trip we took in June was vaguely intended to be for my birthday – though the idea of climbing Snowdon was Ruth’s – as was the yet-to-be-blogged canal trek in September.

There was no concealing my age from the office, in part due to my own whingeing about the impending birthday for some while beforehand. So, in the custom of birthdays with a zero at the end, I was duly presented with a card and some presents – a bunch of flowers and a generous Amazon gift card, plus a bottle of bubbly from Jill. Judith gave a speech including quite a number of stats around the percentage of my adult life I’d spent at the OU, etc etc.

Around 10 of us went out for a lovely pizza dinner at Murati’s in Wolverton the evening before my birthday. Although I’d arranged this, it hadn’t been intended as a birthday meal but just as an ex-Information Office get together, but it happened that the 15th was the date most people could make. Very nice evening, enhanced by the staff appearing with a cake and singing Happy Birthday to the accompaniment of tambourines. Turned out Sara had arranged the cake, which was very sweet of her. I don’t think she’d necessarily banked on the tambourines.

I had the day itself to myself in MK, some of it spent having an Autism Diagnostic Assessment, of which more – maybe – in a later post.

For the weekend, Ruth and I booked a relatively last-minute (by my standards) city break in London, staying at the 4-star Dorsett City, a hotel we’d seen featured in The Times Weekend’s 'Cool Hotel Guide'. The hotel, part of a Chinese-owned chain, is on Aldgate High Street between Aldgate tube station and the church of St Botolph without Aldgate. It’s an unassuming-looking building from the outside, quite a contrast with the gaudy interior (faux gold everywhere).

The Dorsett City to the right of the church

The hotel boasts a ‘destination skybar’ on the 14th floor which does indeed have pretty good views of the surrounding cityscape. As we were keen to try it I’d booked us an hour’s slot early on the Friday evening, which worked out well as we ended up with a great table out on the terrace looking directly out at the view. Here I am with my 'City Sky Line'.

Cocktail at the Jin Bo Law skybar

View down onto the tower of St Botolph's

On the first night we had dinner at the hotel’s ‘Shikumen’ restaurant, which was very nice though practically empty, which we were a bit surprised at. I think both of us would have liked a main course of the colourful dim sum and to have scrapped the rest, though it was all nice enough.

Dim sum at Shikumen

One of the things I noticed was that the hotel’s lift panels didn’t give the option of selecting floor 4 – which immediately got me thinking that floor 4 was some secret mysterious floor along the lines of the fifth floor of the Yanggakdo International Hotel in North Korea.

Ruth and I decided to investigate this by going down via the stairs, but there genuinely seemed to be no fourth floor. Googled this and apparently the number 4 is unlucky in Chinese culture and thus it's common for hotels and office blocks to lack a fourth floor. So there you are. There's a note here about the Dorsett City and its absence of a floor 4.

On the Saturday, I went for an early walk to Tower Bridge. We breakfasted both mornings in the VQ restaurant adjoining the hotel, which was OK though nothing special.

Ruth had a yen to visit the Thames Barrier, so we took the DLR all the way to Woolwich. The DLR part was fun but clearly we hadn’t researched the distances accurately, as we then had a dreary walk to the Barrier, relieved slightly by hopping on a bus partway (Ruth commendably takes charge when she senses I am about to lose it). 

We made for the Information Centre café, through a massive throng of cyclists annoyingly taking up the path. I SHOWED THEM by pushing through them irritably. Once in the café, I found a table while Ruth nobly queued behind a line of cyclists. We had a look around the interesting exhibition. The TB Information Centre had been closed for a while beforehand for a refurbishment, though I have to say it wasn’t hugely obvious to me what the money had been spent on.

Ruth then came up with the idea of crossing back over the river via the Emirates Air Line cable car, which I’d never even heard of. We had a bit of difficulty locating where we were supposed to queue to get on, but once on board the ride was enjoyable though and an alternative way to cross the river, though there is something slightly white elephant-y about it and it seems unclear whether it’s actually getting used by commuters as much as was originally planned.

On our second evening we had dinner at Emilia’s Crafted Pasta at St Katharine Docks – lovely food and we managed to bag a table outside, which was lucky as the place is tiny.

Dinner at Emilia's

The Times Weekend's piece on the Dorsett City: