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: