Woughton Park to Peace Pagoda

Another short walk today along the Grand Union Canal as it makes its way north through Milton Keynes, on another sunny but short November afternoon. Richard visited his parents in the morning then we had a very early lunch before driving across from Norfolk. We left one car at the Peace Pagoda Car Park at SP873407. I was expecting this to be a pay and display car park (we have paid here before) but the machines were covered over, so it appears it was free today! We drove the short distance back to the Walton Lake car park (SP879369) near the Open University's Walton Hall campus. We set off walking soon after 2pm and were back at the Grand Union Canal soon after.

There was a fair amount of activity on the Canal, mostly boats which give the appearance of being permanent homes (and later on we passed a moored boat, accompanied by a charity plant stall, which we have seen on three subsequent walks, so it is obviously moving along the canal at the same speed that we are). We passed the Milton Keynes Marina at Peartree Bridge and two swans obligingly left the marina as we passed by, creating some good photographs (though they were probably hoping we had food!).

We were making rapid progress, sometimes walking along the towpath and sometimes on the adjacent redway ("redways" - paths usually surfaced with red tarmac - criss-cross the whole of Milton Keynes), but we weren't quite sure where we were so out came the myTracks app (which uses mapping form the wonderful OpenStreetMap). A couple of the old bridges we passed until looked distinctly unstable, though I'm sure they are regularly checked.

About a mile north of the marina we passed the Gulliver's Land children's theme park and half a mile or so further on we recognised the buildings of the Milton Keynes Camphill Village (I've sung in a concert in the lovely Chrysalis Theatre here) and we left the canal at a bridge just further north (helpfully signed to the Camphill Cafe). This bridge looked stable enough, though the towpath here was not in the best of conditions.

Our path took a footbridge over the V10 to the car park where we had parked, but we continued on to the Peace Pagoda by Willen Lake. Peace Pagodas are monuments designed to provide a focus for people of all races and creeds and to encourage us in a search for world peace. This Peace Pagoda was completed in 1980, the first in the western world.

We returned to the car, collected the other one, and drove the short distance to the Milton Keynes South Premier Inn at Caldecotte Lake, where this week we have a room overlooking the lake.

Following leg