Houghton House to Stewartby Lake

We had a slightly longer walk today than we had last Sunday, when we walked around the other "half" of the circuit, and we left home rather earlier. We used the same two parking places, but today we drove first to the lay-by close to Stewartby Lake, at TL003427, and left one car there before driving back to Houghton House (TL037393) by way of the B530.

The weather was slightly overcast, though dry and warm. When planning the walk I’d assumed that we would walk back along the concrete access track to Houghton House, thus retracing our route from the Greensand Ridge Walk. However careful inspection of the route on the map and the Marston Vale Timberland Trail description showed that we should access Ampthill Great Park from Ampthill town centre, and it was the reverse route of the John Bunyan Trail on its approach to Houghton House from the South that we were to follow – well almost! After negotiating the slight wiggle through the farmyard behind Houghton House we turned right onto a path beside the covered reservoir. Last week we had climbed up to the Greensand Ridge from the north; today’s route took us gradually downhill again to the south of Houghton House.

Slightly annoyingly we had turned onto the path immediately in front of another couple of walkers, so we were followed as we descended towards Ampthill. However where another path crossed ours, we turned slightly right, off the route of the John Bunyan Trail, and lost the other walkers. We passed some attractive cows and descended to some rough ground. From the distance our route appeared to be blocked, but it turned out that the metal barricades were either side of our route, not across it. We approached Ampthill past the old Rectory and then by way of a track down past the Church to Church Street, where we turned right, re-joining the route of the John Bunyan Trail.

We walked through the old centre of Ampthill, which had the bunting out, crossing the busy roundabouts from Church Street to Woburn Road. Soon however we climbed back along minor streets and entered Ampthill Great Park, originally a deer park surrounding the 15th Century Ampthill Castle and then remodelled by Capability Brown as the approach to Park House. We have had problems in the past with route finding in Ampthill Great Park, but today was straightforward; we headed straight through a wooded area then across the open parkland to the top of the escarpment. There were views down to Park House and Marston Vale beyond, with the brickworking chimneys at Stewartby and the wind turbine next to Stewartby Lake clearly visible even though it wasn’t the clearest of days.

There are two memorial crosses in Ampthill Great Park, one to mark the site of the Castle and one to commemorate Catherine of Aragon, who was living in the Castle whilst Henry VIII was negotiating to divorce her. We walked past the latter then left the park by a route which was not at all obvious in this direction, though we found it easily because we have walked the route in the opposite direction on a couple of occasions. Sorry, that’s not helpful – my best advice would be to keep going straight ahead, ignoring the formal paths through the park. After leaving the park the route crosses over the top of a railway tunnel through which the Bedford to St Pancras line passes, but since the railway is in a tunnel that doesn’t help much with route finding.

It had been slightly annoying to be followed by another couple of walkers south of Houghton House, but that hadn’t caused us any real difficulty. However, as we reached a section around Ossory Farm we found ourselves behind a group of people … with bassett hounds ... mostly walking slowly, some excessively slowly…and the path is narrow as it goes around the farm. Some of the group noticed us behind them and let us past, others were not aware of anything but themselves and their human and canine companions, so we only managed to negotiate the entire group shortly before the path broadened out. Ah well, incidents like this do at least make us realise that however slowly we walk relative to serious walkers, we are pretty fast relative to some!

We were heading towards Millbrook, but rather than keeping on past the Church on the path, then turning right on the road (which is the route of the Greensand Ridge Walk and the John Bunyan Trail) we turned right along a pleasant path before we reached the Church. We passed an attractive white horse grazing in a paddock near the path, then walked down to the road, where we turned left and joined the route of the other two paths. All three routes turned left onto a track just before the entrance to the Millbrook Proving Ground, one of the largest vehicle testing centres in Europe.

The path pretty much follows the perimeter of the proving ground (initially with a golf course on the other side), though because it was mid-summer we had a less good view than is sometimes the case of the ascents and descents that vehicles being tested have to negotiate. However the walking route is not without its own ups and downs, especially after we parted company again with the Greensand Ridge Walk and the Bunyan Trail. The path was through lovely countryside and it was beautifully quiet (well, apart from my puffing and panting!).

Eventually we descended to the village of Lidlington, which has a station on the Bletchley to Bedford line, and after crossing the railway line we crossed fields of crops towards Marston Moretaine. As we were approaching the village we could see the Church, so we decided to go to have a closer look.

We got a bit of a surprise: what looks in the distance like a perfectly ordinary English country church actually has a separate tower, some distance from the church-without-tower. The tower has very thick walls and is thought to have been a watch-tower or place of refuge, perhaps to protect the local population from the Vikings, whose ships may have sailed up the River Ouse as far as Bedford. That sounds far-fetched, but there must be some explanation for the unusual arrangement. We’re seen churches with separate towers before, but from close at hand, these two buildings look really odd together.

We crossed the Marston Moreteine to Lidlington road and soon joined the route we had followed when walking round the whole Marston Vale Millennium Country Park. We crossed the approach road to the Forest Centre; fortunately it isn’t necessary to walk along the approach road, there is a separate path running parallel to it. It isn’t the world’s most exciting of walking, but it was OK. Initially we were walking past new housing to the left with the Country Park (and its wind turbine) to our right. Closer to the Forest Centre, we entered an attractive wooded section, then turned left, back on the route around Stewartby Lake. We were soon back at the car.