Turvey to Astwood

A short but enjoyable walk on a day when we only had an afternoon to spare. The wet winter had continued (though nothing like as bad in Norfolk or Milton Keynes as in some other parts of the country) but it was dry and sunny for most of the time we were walking. We decided to have lunch in two halves and left home around 12.20 after the first half. By 2.30pm we had driven over from Norfolk, parked one car in an old section of road at the junction of the A422 and the western approach to Astwood (SP950474) and the other back at the layby on the A428 to the west of Turvey Bridge (SP937524). I noticed that the River Great Ouse was just about in flood beneath Turvey Bridge so I dashed off to take photographs whilst Richard was putting his walking boots on, forgetting about "second lunch". In fact it transpired that the flooding was rather more impressive further upstream, between Newport Pagnell and Sherington, where we walked back in March.

Richard joined me and we walked into Turvey and turned right onto Newton Lane. As the houses ended on the left-hand side, there is supposed to be a path but we couldn't immediately see it, so we continued along the road to the attractive Lodge. The road takes a sharp turn to the right here, but we continued straight ahead on a private drive, climbing quite markedly. There were quite a few dog walkers around, and a good view back to Turvey. We passed through a bank of trees, with Woodside Cottage on one side and the path we'd been meant to follow from Turvey on the other. The path swept around to the right, over a disused railway line and past a wood and the chocolate-box pretty Keeper's Cottage.

It was all pleasant enough, but I was just beginning to think that we wouldn't get off the tarmacked surface at all today, so I was delighted when the drive turned to the left and our straight-ahead route was on grass. Richard may have less happy memories...the countryside was undulating and our path descended quite steeply, and there was a discrepancy between the route shown on the map (which had a peculiar wiggle round to the right) and the straight ahead route through a muddy patch. Richard was probably checking the map whilst walking (a bad habit) and he fell over in the mud. He was unharmed by the incident, but he and the map both came out of the incident covered in mud. After cleaning them up as best we could, we climbed up the hill on the other side of the little valley and stopped for the second half-lunch that we hadn't had.

The walking surface was a bit variable - sometimes gravel, sometimes mud and sometimes just plain wet, but we eventually emerged onto Turvey Road. There was an attractive colourful sky behind some wind turbines, though unfortunately the photo I took doesn't do justice to the sky. We passed three women and a younger girl who were riding horses in the opposite direction along the road. A little later they passed us again, this time in the same direction as we were walking. We passed Dove House (which appears to incorporate a converted dovecote) and Dovecote Farm (no sign of another dovecote here). We crossed the A422 and passed our car, walking just slightly further so as to take a proper look at Astwood Church in the lovely late afternoon light, then returned to the car, collected the other one, and drove to our regular Sunday night accommodation at the Bedford South Premier Inn. We had hoped to look at a potential new car at a nearby garage, but we felt that Richard might be a little too muddy!

following leg