Great Horwood to Grand Union Canal at Wolverton

I was at a friend's 60th birthday party in Harpenden yesterday and we were heading to another social event, this time in Newport Pagnell, at anything after 3pm today, so we decided to spend both Saturday and Sunday night at the Bedford South Premier Inn and we had most of today free for walking. This provided the ideal opportunity to complete the North Bucks Way. After two lovely days on the path we had expected to be somewhat disappointed by the final leg because of its proximity to Milton Keynes. The final mile few miles were indeed not wonderfully exciting, but otherwise it was a lovely walk. It was a cold sunny day - and the mud that (a) we might expect at this time of year and (b) we remembered from a section we'd walked before when on the Milton Keynes Boundary Walk, remained frozen for most of the day.

Given that we only had to walk 10 miles we had a relatively leisurely start to the day. We left the Premier Inn about 8.30am and drove to Old Wolverton. We parked one car in the car park at SP806414, by the Grand Union Canal near the Galleon Pub. We then drove on the Great Horwood by way of Stony Stratford. Beachampton and Nash, and in Great Horwood we parked in the same car park (SP773314) as last time we were here. While Richard was putting on his walking boots I walked back to the centre of the village to take some photos.

We left Great Horwood by walking a short distance along Nash Road (the road we'd approached the village on, from the A421) then took a footpath to the left, crossing frosty fields with sheep grazing. We crossed straight over the A421 and began to hear the sound of gunfire. This turned out to be coming for a group of men who were shooting towards a building (presumably for practice) in the corner of a field; the other noticeable thing about this field was its very distinctive ridge and furrow surface.

We were approaching the village of Nash, and there was a slightly complicated section around the edges of paddocks, presumably to avoid walking along the road, which wasn't far away. At a footpath junction we turned right, on a track which took us to the road at Wood End, with a pretty thatched cottage on the corner. On the other side of the road there was a frozen duck pond, with farm buildings converted into houses behind. We took a track past the farm buildings and into undulating countryside.

Today's walk was mostly very well signposted, but around Barnhill we really weren't sure which way to go; in fact the route continued in the track we were on, with the farm buildings on our right, then we took a path which stayed next to the hedge as the track veered to the left. We only spotted the path because others had walked this way; there wasn't a signpost in sight and the fact that we were approaching a map turn didn't help. Once we realised that we were heading for the village of Whaddon, whose Church we could see on the hill ahead of us, we had much more confidence that we were going the right way. We walked slightly downhill to a gap in the hedge then climbed quite steeply up to the Church. It was delightful, with good views behind us.

Delightful it might have been, but the signposting around Whaddon Church was also misleading, here because there was a signpost, but it pointed away from the churchyard and after crossing a field we found ourselves on the wrong side of a padlocked gate. Back we went, then through the churchyard and out onto the correct route. We turned right onto the road through Whaddon, then left onto a track by the junction of Coddimoor Lane and Shenley Road (which is closed for 18 months). The track left Whaddon and became a footpath, adjacent to Briary Plantation. We were getting closer to the housing estates of Milton Keynes, but we were still walking across lovely open countryside. Whaddon Hall (now several private dwellings; a few years ago I came close to renting a room in one) was visible to the left and the boggy sheep field that we were crossing is apparently on the site of Snelshall Priory, a Benedictine Priory founded in 1219.

We turned left onto the path that runs down the western edge of Milton Keynes, joining the Milton Keynes Boundary Walk on a section we had walked less than a year ago, on 17th April 2016. In fact, at this junction, the North Bucks Way, MK Boundary Walk, Midshires Way and Swan's Way all briefly converge. It was less muddy than when we were last here, and although we remarked, as last year, of the clarity of the boundary, with housing to our right and open county to our left, there were many places where the houses (and Woodhill Prison) weren't visible at all and we could have been in the middle of nowhere. We turned off the path for a short distance into Oakhill Wood, and stopped for lunch here, sitting on tree trunks.

Towards the northern end of Oakhill Wood*, the Midshires Way headed off to the east whilst the route of the MK Boundary Walk headed off to the west soon afterwards. We meanwhile passed through Hazeley Wood and an area of scrubland then, near Whitehouse Farm, we found ourselves passing through a building site. Milton Keynes is officially 50 this year, and there seems to be house building going on all over the city. When they are building houses, footpaths tend to get diverted or just to disappear, as happened around Water Newton when we were on the MK Boundary Walk. However today we got off lightly, just having to squeeze around the edge of barriers twice in order to cross a dead-end road which crossed the path at right angle.

The track we were on brought us out onto a road, and we turned right. This took us to Watling Street which runs, Roman road style, approximately parallel to the A5. We turned left, knowing that we wanted a right hand footpath in a few 100 metres, but half expecting more construction site woes. However, exactly where we expected it, there was one of the Milton Keynes "Redways" and we followed similar paths though the Kiln Farm industrial estate, around Abbey Hill Golf Centre, across the A5 then through Greenleys and Wolverton.

We reached the Grand Union Canal and walked the short distance to the bridge by the Galleon Pub, where we had parked the car. We were last here in December 2014 on a circuit from the Iron Trunk viaduct when we were walking the Ouse Valley Way. So that was it; we'd used the North Bucks Way to link from The Ridgeway to the Ouse Valley Way. We celebrated by watching ducks waddling over the frozen canal!