Emma's Blog: The Steppingley Step

Managed a 12 mile walk on Sunday 17th – my first walk of any significant length for a while – when Steve, Hai and I completed the local LDWA’s ‘Steppingley Step’. The other route options besides the 12-mile route were an 18-mile route and a 26-mile route, but 12 miles is about my limit for an enjoyable day’s walk; much over that crosses over into slog/endurance event. Matthew did the 26 mile route, in only about an hour more than we took. Let’s not ponder that one.

The ‘Steppingley Step’ was one of the LDWA’s Challenge Events. Matt has been a member of the LDWA for several years; I did join for a year a while back and went on one walk with the group in early 2018, but didn’t pursue any more walks with them, feeling that the pace they set was a bit fast for me. Also, the walk I went on, of 14 miles in length, was on the shorter side for them; many of their walks are in the 18-20 mile range. Matt had drawn our attention to the ‘Steppingley’ event and I did fancy a walking challenge, not having done one for a while, so signed up. Steve tried to interest a few more people in the office; several did express vague enthusiasm but then failed to sign up in time.

The walk started from the village hall in Barton-le-Clay in Bedfordshire – no idea why this village in particular; perhaps one of the organisers lives there. The 12 mile route headed initially west from Barton before turning south to climb the hill (and steps) up the Sharpenhoe Clappers (this, along with several other hills in the vicinity, seems to be owned by the National Trust). Then across fields to the village of Harlington, and across more fields to Westoning, where the checkpoint was. Then northeast towards Pulloxhill and then back southeast across more fields back to Barton.

We were supplied with various instructions beforehand about things we had to bring, including a compass – I did buy one a while back, but have struggled to make sense of how to use it so was glad that this didn’t turn out to be necessary. The reason it wasn’t necessary was that the route organisers supplied both a GPX file and an amazingly detailed route description – snip below. Despite appearing at first glance to be written in some sort of code, it proved invaluable on the ground.

We knew the three of us were likely to make fairly slow progress so had resigned ourselves to lagging in the rear. In the first half of the route we were joined briefly by a chap who turned out to be the back marker (we hadn’t known there was going to be one) and warned us that we couldn’t fall behind him or we’d get disqualified, and we’d also be disqualified if we failed to make the checkpoint at Westoning before it closed at 11:30am or (we hadn’t known this and had assumed it would just mean we’d miss out on tea and biscuits). However, after pausing to check in with base, he stopped tagging us so I assume he was told that the rules weren’t quite as draconian as he’d been assuming.

Although I’d initially been confident that we’d reach the checkpoint in good time (having left Barton around 08:15am), we in fact only just made it before it closed – as we reached Westoning I tried to speed up discreetly without appearing to chivvy the other two (not sure that came off). Thankfully the volunteers at the checkpoint (another village hall) were lovely, ticked off our numbers and allowed us to sit down for 15 minutes or so while they cleared up around us. They did offer us all the remaining biscuits given that we were officially the last people through, but we stopped at a restrained fistful of Jaffa Cakes each.

Us at the checkpoint at Westoning Village Hall

Think we made it back to Barton for about 2:30pm. We each got one of these certificates for participating.

The building pictured on the certificate is the Pulloxhill water tower, which we passed on the walk - in fact we stopped beside it briefly to consider its potential for conversion to a desirable residence.

The Pulloxhill water tower

The weather was lovely – cool but not raining – but after all the recent rain the (many) fields we had to cross were extremely muddy underfoot, with that clay-type mud which clings to your boots and hampers lifting your feet. By the time we finished I think I was carrying half my own body weight in clay. On that note: Steve wondered whether the village name 'Barton-le-Clay' was of French origin and had something to do with keys (Barton le Clef?), but actually the Wikipedia page has it that Barton was recorded in the Domesday Book as ‘Barton in the Clay’, which would seem to sum up the area quite accurately.