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Walked by Sally and Richard, Sunday 22nd October 2017
3.8 miles of walking (1 hour 20 minutes), 1.9 miles progress on Grand Union Canal Walk
For more photos of this walk, click here.
Richard's father is still in hospital, and we are trying to visit his mother (in the residential home where we moved them both earlier in the year) every day if we possibly can. By the time we've driven across from Norfolk to the Bedford/Milton Keynes, as we do most Sundays, we don't have a lot of time left for walking. Today we left home about 1.15pm and I checked in at the Bedford South Premier Inn then met Richard in the car park; we left my car there and drove on in Richard's car to the car park at "Three Locks" (SP893284). We set off walking around 3.20pm, leaving us about 2 hours for walking. We didn't need that long, but it is salutary to note that the two hours will be one hour after the clocks go back next weekend, unless we can manage to get away sooner.
It was a windy day, so I wore my new Shetland Wool headband/ear warmer for the first time and it was useful both in keeping my hair in order and in keeping my ears warm. There were a few spots of rain as we were walking, but it didn't amount to much and the sun was shining for most of the time. There was quite a lot of activity on the canal, with privately owned houseboats and also tourist boats from the Wyvern Shipping Co Ltd (who are based in nearby Linslade), perhaps more than usual because it is half term.
There was a narrowboat passing through the top one of the Three Locks and the pub of the same name was busy, presumably with people out for Sunday lunch. As we left the locks behind us, we passed several moored narrow boats and Richard spotted a heron. We carried on along the towpath to the west of the canal, then crossed to the other bank by way of a bridge near Stoke Hammond. It was nice to see a Grand Union Canal Walk sign at this point.
We reached Stoke Hammond Lock, a pretty place with a narrowboat passing through this lock too. We continued north, passing a wide range of houseboats and we noticed an overflow channel guiding water from the canal to a river running alongside. A little investigation revealed this to be my old friend the River Ouzel, which flows around the Open University campus in Milton Keynes.
We reached Bridge 102, where the route of the Milton Keynes Boundary Walk comes down to the canal. I went up on to the bridge in the hope of finding an MK Boundary Walk sign to photograph, but there wasn't one so you'll have to take the photograph of the bridge and the track on the map as evidence that we got to this point.
We retraced our steps to the Three Locks, with different narrowboats passing through Stoke Hammond Lock and just leaving the bottom one of the Three Locks, and the heron back in the same place just before the Three Locks. It had been a pleasant short walk.
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