Houghton House to Ridgmont

We've had a number of short walks recently in time grabbed from a particularly busy period of our lives. Today we were slightly short of time (though the situation was easing) but more significantly the weather forecast was truly dreadful. We had lunch at home, and as we drove over to Ridgmont in the early afternoon we drove through heavy rain and we expected we'd have a distinctly soggy walk. However the sun came out and stayed out...amazing! We walked most of this leg in reverse when on the Greensand Ridge Walk just over a year ago and I think I probably enjoyed today's walk even more than I had done on that occasion. We parked one car on the outskirts of the Ridgmont in the spot that we have now parked several times (at SP978363) then drove to the parking area for Houghton House (at TL037392). Whilst Richard was putting his walking boots on, I took some photographs of the house, which stands in a position overlooking Marston Vale to the north. Then we walked back along the concrete access road which leads from the B530 north of Ampthill to Houghton House; there were a surprising number of other people out walking (mostly families) and the views to the south were also good.

We turned left onto the B530 and after a short distance we turned into Ampthill Park, on the route which we had failed to find in the opposite direction. We walked through the glorious Laurel Wood then out into open Capability Brown landscaped parkland, with superb views over Ampthill Park House to Marston Vale (with the four chimneys that remain from the brickmaking industry, the lakes in landfill sites, and the wind turbine near Marston Moretaine now quite familiar, whilst they'd been new to us a year ago). We passed the two memorials, one to the 1st World War and one, "Katherine's Cross", commemorating Catherine of Aragon who was held in Ampthill Castle on this site, following the annulment of her marriage to Henry VIII.

We left Ampthill Park and crossed the Bedford to St Pancras railway (beneath us in a tunnel) then meandered our way past Ossory Farm (complete with alpacas) to Milbrook Church and then down a steep and narrow path to Millbrook Village. We walked through the village then up towards the entrance to Millbrook Vehicle Proving Ground. We actually took a track just before the entrance and followed a path with a bracken-covered slope on our left-hand side and the Vehicle Proving Ground on the other side of a fence to our right. Richard spotted a "1 in 1" sign at one stage and we could see some pretty steep slopes. After turning right, we had a fairly steep climb ourselves! We turned left again, now with a golf course on the left, and this led us into lovely woodland. Our route took the more left-hand of two options, with the Marston Vale Trail taking the more right-hand option.

Our route was still shared with the Greensand Ridge Walk and we were still not entirely sure whether we'd follow the amended Greensand Ridge Walk route to Ridgmont (to avoid crossing the A507 at Flying Horse Farm). However after passing Southview Farm and turning left onto a minor road, the Greensand Ridge Walk was signposted right but the John Bunyan Trail continued straight ahead. We were meant to turn right slightly later but we must have missed the correct turning; after looking at a gap in the hedge which would have required us to walk straight across a ploughed field on the other side, we eventually crawled through another gap in the hedge and walked a short distance across the field (as others had obviously done previously) before joining the "correct" route along field boundaries to the A507, where we turned right for a short distance. After all the fuss, the road was easy to cross.

We took a path on the other side of the A507 which meandered its way through an undulating landscape to a bridge over the M1. On the other side, we again meandered, joining the new route of the Greensand Ridge Walk (though now heading towards Ridgmont from the south not the north). We passed the ruined remains of All Saints' Church, Segenhoe, only about half a kilometre from Ridgmont Church, which presumably explains why only one of them remains in use. As at the beginning of the walk, there were a fair number of other people about. We walked to the short distance to Ridgmont and so back to the car.

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