Day Twelve

Monday 14 December
– Milton Keynes to Blisworth

For financial reasons (saving a third off the train fare) I didn’t start walking from Milton Keynes Station until twenty to eleven. With 14 (flat) miles to walk, I should have been fine for daylight, and I was, but there wasn’t a great deal of leeway for flooded towpaths or whatever. So I determined to walk it non-stop.

A few days before the forecast had been dry, but at the last minute the weathergirl had, with a twirl of her pink duffle-coat, snatched it away and substituted intermittent rain. This turned out to be nothing more than fine drizzle, a nuisance but no worse. My plan was to cross to the Western side of the railway and strike North along one of Milton Keynes’s green corridors. I have to admit that they do them pretty well.

This one followed a meandering stream, with good walking surfaces through established woodland. Look carefully and there’s a factory, there a housing estate. But the heron which watched me, safe on the other side of the stream, didn’t care about the hidden horrors – he had a good beat to patrol. The towns and villages which were swallowed by the new town live on in odd ways – the “footpath to the church” is now a cul-de-sac of semis. One ancient settlement is obvious. The mediaeval pilgrimage chapel of Bradwell Abbey still stands, with other bits of the abbey incorporated into modern buldings.

As soon as I departed from the planned walking route, I was on my own – footpaths were withdrawn, and I had to find my own way through a semi-derelict trading estate before once again conforming to an official route to Wolverton. Wolverton has been strongly associated with railways since 1838, when it was chosen by the London & Birmingham Railway Company as the site of their railway works, for the very good reason that it was halfway between the eponymous cities. The works spawned housing which grew into the “new towns” of Wolverton and New Bradwell. How ironic that they should have been swallowed in their turn by Milton Keynes. The works had various guises, sometimes manufacturing and sometimes repairing locomotives and carriages, and there is still residual activity today. I walked past what appeared to be old buildings with a spanking new roof on them (thanks to Wikipedia for the background, as usual).

Just after the railway works I turned West then North West on the towpath of the Grand Union Canal. After a couple of hundred yards of being rather rundown, the towpath became wide and surfaced, possibly to accommodate bikes. Today it also accommodated a very jolly jogger, who wished me a cheery “good morning”. The canal itself was the colour of soup, possibly lentil or thin pea. I soon reached the Iron Trunk Aqueduct, which carries the canal over the River Great Ouse. Apparently it replaced a series of locks, down to and up from the river level, and later a brick-built aqueduct which collapsed. Like its much bigger brother at Pontcysyllte, the aqueduct is constructed such that the canal is only separated from the vertical drop by a low metal sill – boaters with vertigo, look away now!. The towpath, mercifully, has a bit more protection.

At Cosgrove there is a lovely bridge. It’s the colour of light honey and gothic in style, altogether different from the usual bow bridges found in this neck of the woods. The marina at Thrupp Wharf is being extended, so business must be good. By an isolated narrowboat further along, a man was using a generator-powered chainsaw to cut a log into discs an inch or two thick, possibly ready for decoration and sale next year.

The canal was now narrower and winding, and the towpath was very grassy, suggesting that it is little-walked. The path was frequently carpeted with fallen crab apples. The distant sight of a main road served to emphasise how peaceful it was, sauntering alongside the water. A rare sight was a narrowboat actually moving; they seem to spend most of their time sleeping at the bankside, occasionally being buffed up for adventures to come.

A flight of locks heralded Stoke Bruerne, which prospered during the boom years of canal transport, and still depends heavily on the canal, being the home of the National Waterways Museum. Still in a bit of a hurry, I spurned the museum, and the café was no temptation – it was shut. There is quite a community of narrowboat-dwellers above the top lock. Many of the boats were decorated for Christmas, and a smoking chimney or gentle thud of a diesel engine betrayed an occupied boat. About half a mile further on, I reached the South end of Blisworth Tunnel, the last link in the building of the canal, only completed after the collapse of the first attempt. There is no towpath through the tunnel, so I had to climb up for a walk across the top.

This started well, as a pleasant amble through some woodland. Then I was unceremoniously dumped on to a fast, intermittently-busy road for over a mile. There is a verge which could be made walkable, but it has been left lumpy, bumpy and cut through by drainage ditches. As a part of the Grand Union Canal Walk, proudly promoted and marked on the OS map, it’s a disgrace. I was relieved to leave the early going-home-from-work traffic and get back to the canal just by the North end of the tunnel, for the final, peaceful half mile into Blisworth village. That’s the last of my End to end journey for 2009.