Circuit from Bedford South Premier Inn to the Ouse Valley Way and return

It was a sunny summer day and we were keen to get a walk before heading to our usual Sunday residence, the Bedford South (Kempston) Premier Inn! However life was pretty complicated, both at work and at home, so we had a lot of pressures on our time and it was 3pm before we left Norfolk. Our options for a next leg on the John Bunyan Trail all looked a little long, so I suggested that much as we had done a circuit from the Premier Inn to link to the route of the John Bunyan Trail, we should do a similar walk to link to the Ouse Valley Way, which we knew lay just to the north of Kempston; we'd walked this bit on another sunny day just over two years ago, ending memorably at Richard's Bedford Grandma's house. Today's walk also gave us the opportunity to go to look at Kempston Church End; we'd seen All Saints' Church in the distance on several walks, and had driven close on numerous occasions, in particular when driving between the A421 and Sherington and between the Premier Inn and various walks to the north.

Thus is was that we set off from the Premier Inn at just after 5pm; we were not expecting exactly mountainous terrain so Richard didn't even bother to change from ordinary shoes to walking boots. We headed up Wilkinson Drive and onto the wide path that appears to be known as Smith Mews, emerging onto Ridge Road opposite Kempston Rural Lower School. Because we hadn't found a route through the building site past the School last time we were here we didn't even check, instead turning right onto Ridge Road past more mature housing and allotments before cutting back past a children's playground and modern but quite upmarket development to emerge on Martrell Drive. Here the path is close to an older house within its own grounds, set behind rather high walls and with rather offputting "private, no entry" type signs. I don't think they want us to stop by to say hello! To be fair, if you thought you had a nice little place in the country then someone built an enormous housing estate around you, perhaps you'd be justified in feeling a little miffed.

We crossed Cemetery Road and our path (labelled as Ladies Walk on OpenStreetMap) was almost directly opposite the point at which we'd emerged. We were now on a path between trees and we soon reached Church Walk, running perpendicular to Ladies Walk); initially we turned right. We were again again on very pleasant path through trees, on this occasion Lime trees which were planted as an avenue here many years ago. We reached a playing field where they were playing cricket and the path eventually became a road, still called Church Walk. Where the road took a sharp right-hand turn we took a path straight ahead again. This brought us back into housing which, I'd guess, was built in the 1970s. We walked along Meadowview Road then left onto Riverview Way and left again onto Mill Road.

The clue is in the road names; we were heading towards the Old Mill (and the Old Mill complex of modern housing) and the River Great Ouse. There were several fishermen on or close to bridge over the main part of the river, and on the delightfully clear river there was a large family of swans and cygnets. We crossed the river, walked over a small section of rough ground, then crossed another bridge, over a small tributary, and there we were at the Ouse Valley Way, at the point where it has passed through the growing Great Denham Estate and is heading back towards Bedford town centre (via Bedford Grandma's house).For today we simply reached the Ouse Valley Way then turned around and retraced our steps, back over the river, past the Mill and though the housing estate to Church Walk.

We retraced our steps along Church Walk but didn't turn down Ladies Walk, instead continuing straight ahead, under the A428 as the road crosses the river. On the bridge there is a moving plaque in honour of its designer, John E Kinns, who it appears from research afterwards, died in 2008 aged 36 when a metal tape measure hit a high voltage supply on a railway beneath another bridge. We continued to Kempston Church End where we stood to one side to let two cars leave the little car park before admiring the delightful church and churchyard.

We continued down the road from the Church to Cemetery Road, where a signs indicated that we were in Kempston Rural and that the village was named in the Doomsday Book. We crossed the A428, still on Cemetery Road and headed back, past the Kempston sign, to Martrell Drive. We weren't particularly keen on the idea of retracing our circuitous route back around Ridge Road, so we decided to investigate whether there was a pedestrian route through to Kempston Rural Lower School, and there was! From here, all that remained to be done was to walk along Smith Mews (where a competent roller-skater was skating up and down) to Wilkinson Road and so to the Premier Inn.

Click here to see all our photos from this walk