New Bradwell to Sherington

I had a room booked at the Marston Moreteine Travelodge (what excitement!) to enable me to get to work early tomorrow without a stupidly early start, so it seemed sensible to spend today back on the Ouse Valley Way in the Milton Keynes area. We left home in separate cars around 8.30am and, despite the fact that the Black Cat roundabout (where the A421 meets the A1) was out of action, so we had a diversion further south to Sandy then back to Bedford, we met up in the car park at the Village Hall in Sherington (SP890466) soon after 10.30am. We left one car there and drove across the north of Milton Keynes and left the other car in an Ouse Valley car park near some allotments in New Bradwell (SP823416). We were walking soon after 11am. It was dry in the morning, with some sunshine, and the slight drizzle in the afternoon didn’t cause too many problems.

The route from the car park to the Grand Union Canal retraced our steps from our previous leg of the Ouse Valley Way, back in December. We joined the Grand Union canal by the Bradwell Windmill and where we had turned right in December, today we turned left. There was quite a lot of activity with dog walkers, a family feeding ducks and a narrow boat chugging along the canal. We walked along the canal towpath as it headed to the north, under a couple of bridges. The edge of the built up area of Milton Keynes is quite sharp (though some recent development, in this case at Stantonbury Park is encroaching over the line) and suddenly we were in the countryside, with the first of a series of flooded gravel pits to our left.

As the Grand Union Canal turned to the east, we left it and continued to the north, past the ruins of St Peter’s Church to rejoin the River Great Ouse as it wandered its way between more flooded gravel sits, with colourful sailing activity to our left and then lots of wildfowl in the area of Linford Lakes to our right. We crossed the river, on what is shown as a minor road on the map, but the bridge was gated and the surface was very uneven; I’m not sure I’d want to bring a car along here. What the route lacked in road quality, it made up for in the number of swans in the fields and in the diversity of named footpaths; in this area we encountered the Swan’s Way, the Midshires Way and the Hanslope Circular Ride.

We emerged onto a proper road at Hill Farm and followed the road to Little Linford. We then took a footpath with views to more flooded gravel pits and to the M1 motorway. We passed some delightful foals and went underneath the motorway. We turned right above a weir and stopped for lunch. The route wandered past more lakes, with more swans in the fields, and emerged onto Lakes Lane, which we could have followed all the way down to Newport Pagnell. Instead we walked around “Bury Field”, a common with earthworks from Civil War times and a “Railway that never was”. We could see the Church in Newport Pagnell in the distance ahead of us, and it was drizzling, but we were very good and walked round the common as shown by the map, rather than just walking straight across it.

We emerged into a most attractive area of Newport Pagnell and turned right into the town (off the route of the Ouse Valley Way) and stopped for a cup of tea at Costa Café. Then we crossed the river (which splits into two braids at this point) and turned right towards Sherington, with an attractive Ouse Valley Way sign. There is a footpath by the road for the mile or so along the road towards Sherington, but it wasn’t exactly exciting walking and it was still drizzling.

We walked across fields to Sherington, and the rain stopped just was we arrived. We walked up Church Lane to the ancient and most attractive St Laud’s Church, then we returned to the car, rescued the other one, and drove to our Travelodge room.

Following leg (of Ouse Valley Way)

Following leg (of Grand Union Canal Walk, heading north-west)