Cranfield to Hall End Wootton
Walked by Sally and Richard, Sunday 25th June 2017
About 3.8 miles of walking, all on the route of the John Bunyan Trail
Click here for all our photos of this walk.
After walking several short legs in the north-western sector of the John Bunyan Trail, we had hoped to do a longer stretch further to the south today, but it wasn't to be. Today the problem was not for reasons of work or family (Richard's Dad was still in hospital so the situation there was a little more stable), but rather the good old British weather! Actually, it was more the weather forecast, which had predicted dry and sunny weather for Sunday, but then changed to heavy rain in the late morning and most of the afternoon. I suspect that in reality the heavy rain was very localised, but we hadn't felt like a day of wet walking, so delayed our departure from Norfolk and decided to just do another short leg of the walk. The walk from Cranfield to Wootton was pleasant, if nothing special, and made more interesting by the fact that not only do I drive along the A421 in Marston Vale below on my regular journeying between Norfolk and Milton Keynes, but when the A421 was less good, I used to use a "rat run" through Cranfield and occasionally on to Wootton. So whilst today's walk was on paths which we had not walked previously, the road at each end was all too familar! The clouds were quite threatening as we set off, and there was some very light rain, but it was never sufficient to warrant waterproofs and the weather was generally good for walking (in contrast to the very hot weather the week before and the very wet weather the week after).
We parked the smaller car in the space we had found last week on the outskirts of Wootton (next to the gate at TL001454). In fact there is plenty of parking space just down the road near Wootton Church, so if you are using JordanWalks to suggest parking places, there is no need to worry if your car doesn't fit where we left ours. We drove to Cranfield on the route that I have used occasionally (see previous paragraph), though it felt quite unfamiliar, partly because I usually only continued on the rat run to Wootton on my way home from Milton Keynes, so we were going "the wrong way", and also because they are building a housing estate just to the west of Wootton, so they have cleared a large patch of land and there are traffic controls on the road. Unusually, I'm not going to tell you where in Cranfield we parked the other car, because it felt a bit cheeky.
Cranfield is a large village and our route out it, along High Street and Bedford Road, was not particularly attractive. At the junction with Crane Way, we took a passageway through houses and out into an open area of grassland. We were up above Marston Vale and as turned sharp right and descended slightly we got good views down to the area around Marston Moretaine (also all too familiar) and to "The White Cottage" which you pass on the road from Cranfield and in which I have stayed when it was a B&B (I don't think it is any longer).
We turned left again to continue on the ridge, passing through a rather industrial farmyard at Roxhill Manor Farm and onto a track. We had occasional views to the four chimneys that remain from when this area was renowned for its brickmaking. Richard, who remembers this area from an earlier era, when visiting his "Bedford Grandma" told me that he remembers the very particular smell of the brickmaking industry.
After turning left and then right past cereal fields to a house named Ashbrook, left left again for a brief walk through rather gloomy woodland, most of the rest of the walk followed field edges, with the fields on the left and a narrow belt of trees to the right. It was lovely rolling countryside, though there were few views without a power line in sight somewhere. There were occasional paths to the right and left, and at one stage our straight ahead path became rather overgrown, leading us to believe that most of the people who walk this way are following their own circular routes, not the John Bunyan Trail.
Eventually we turned right, with signposts indicating that we were now also on the Infinity Trail and the Marston Vale Trail. I think I caught a glimpse of the Bedford South Premier Inn (where, as usual, we were staying) and in the opposite direction there were views back to the four brickmaking chimneys. The path brought us down towards Wootton and we emerged onto the road right by our car. However I'd decreed it to be a pity that the path doesn't pass properly through Wootton, so I walked down to the Church in order to photograph it, and Richard picked me up from there.
