Walk with Hai via Newport Pagnell and Linford Lakes, 7.5 miles

Saturday 12 April

We wanted to meet up for an activity but decided against a parkrun as we’ve both been crap at them recently; also that would have meant an earlier start, and I wanted some time to recover from my Premier Inn breakfast and Hai had to drive a neighbour to the station.

We set off from Hai’s flat in Great Linford and followed the old railway path under the M1 to Newport Pagnell, where we stopped at a café for a drink. As it was quite warm, I went for an iced latte, which possibly could have done with some sugar. I rarely drink iced coffee as an adult but used to make them quite often as a teenager at home, using “Camp” coffee – I haven’t consumed Camp since and not sure whether it was sweetened or whether we added sugar, but the result is that I expect iced coffee to be sweet, so if I have one again I’ll be adding some sugar. It was quite nice though.

Iced lattes

After leaving the café we walked across the lower part of Bury Field to join Lakes Lane, which becomes the Ouse Valley Way and enters an area of fishing lakes. The footpath was poorly signposted here and I was glad I’d taken my OS map as it enabled me to get us across the correct footbridge.

Crossing Bury Field

Lane

River Ouse from the footbridge

We walked alongside the Ouse for a bit, through an area that looks from my map as though it would be pleasantly tree-lined, but in fact all the trees had been felled and it all looked a bit post-apocalyptic. Strava also shows it as an area called The Cob.

The not-so-green reality

After passing under the M1 (for the second time today), the path eventually reached a road, and we turned left and through Little Linford. There was a bit of roadside verge walking until we reached Mill Lane and were able to turn off into the Linford Lakes Nature Reserve. We followed the path – labelled as ‘Swan’s Way’ for the last bit – to where it joins the canal towpath and meets Wolverton Road. There are some posh new builds here.

Following the path

The path in the picture above is the yellow minor road with the dotted edges in the map snip below. We were about where the little red arrow is pointing.

Ruins of St Peter's Church

We followed the towpath under Black Horse Bridge and back along the canal to Great Linford.

Our route:

Returning to the annoying question of poor/absent footpath signage: Hai and I did a previous walk in July 2023 in the same area that was particularly bad. On that occasion we took a path leading off Little Linford Lane where the stile leading from the road to the path was borderline impassable – we lucked out as there happened to be a chap nearby, probably an angler with a permit, who opened the adjacent locked gate for us and let us in. I had a poke on Street View last night and from this October 2024 photo it looks to have possibly been cleared a bit, but still looks pretty overgrown.

Google Street View image of the footpath entrance (red star on map below)

Once we got in, we had to fight our way along a very overgrown “footpath” and, further on near Hill Farm, dithered for quite a while unsure whether to walk across a field - it did look from the map as though that was the correct route but again, there was no sign and I am not always robust enough to take a path if it's not made clear that it's public access. Hai and I did, eventually, take the path, in the absence of much other choice, and it was fine, but still. Speaking to Matt about it afterwards he reckoned that whoever owns the land just doesn’t want walkers there. Tsk. Needs some concerted Ramblers to complain to the council for better signposting.

There was supposedly a footpath in there somewhere ...