Sharnbrook to Bedford Grandma's House

I was keen to get out walking, even though the weather forecast wasn’t brilliant. The overall direction of this leg was from north to south, as the River Ouse completed a large meander that had taken us up to Sharnbrook but now returned to Bedford. The middle part of the route was shared with the John Bunyan Trail, a 77-mile trail dedicated to the memory of the author of PIlgrim's Progress. Today’s walk also took us almost past the house where Richard’s Bedford Grandma lived when Richard was a boy, so we went to find it. The house and its location above the river were pretty much as Richard remembered, but they are in the process of building the huge “village” of Great Denham slightly further to the west, so Ranworth Walk will not be on the edge of Bedford for much longer.

In planning our route from home and deciding where to leave a car at the southern end of our walk, we initially planned to park as close as possible to Ranworth Walk, reaching the parking place by cutting through Great Denham from the A428 (the road I take around Bedford when I’m driving between Denver and Sherington rather than Denver and Milton Keynes). However, they’ve put a rising bollard between the new and old developments (presumably to stop it becoming a rat run) so we actually parked one car on Greenkeepers Road in Great Denham (TL025490) before returning to the A428 and driving to Sharnbrook by way of Bedford (with a small added complication as a result of a road closure). We left the other car in the same little car park in Sharnbrook as last time (SP996597). Last time we were here there was cherry blossom on the trees; today everywhere was very green. Of course ‘England’s Green and Pleasant Land’ is such because we have regular rain, and it was raining as we left Sharnbrook. It was a bit damp during the morning, but it didn’t come to much.

We walked down Sharnbrook High Street, then took a path past what was once Sharnbrook Windmill but is now a rather odd observation tower in someone’s garden. We cut across a field to the “Pinchmill Islands”, and meandered our way through woodland, passing/crossing a series of waterways, on paths which were sometimes rather overgrown. We were grateful for our over-trousers. The correct direction was not always clear, but we got it right! We emerged past a field containing both cows and caravans (is this farm diversification?), and as we reached Radwell we passed a field with a number of people out with metal detectors. We walked through Radwell, the first of several villages with pretty rose-clad cottages.

The path between Radwell and Pavenham follows a meander of the river, though there was a strip of woodland between us and the river, so we only caught occasional glimpses of it. About halfway along, with the woodland/river still on our left, we reached the Pavenham Park Golf Club on our right. We passed an attractive bank of orchids, then cut across the golf course and round the cricket pitch (complete with covers on the wicket and a rather upmarket marquee – perhaps it’s a wedding venue?). We turned right onto a road which we followed through the attractive village of Pavenham, with a series of farms and pretty cottages with names all ending in “mas” e.g. Bartlemas Farm.

We crossed the road and walked back down towards the river, turning towards the right to follow another meander, this time above the river but within sight of it, and occasionally coming closer. There were cows, sheep, and a loud hailer somewhere to our right – we never found out what that was about. As we reached Stevington we passed through a particularly dense patch of vegetation (perhaps “giant rhubarb”, which isn’t actually rhubarb), near a well beneath the church. We climbed up to the pretty church, and stopped for lunch at a conveniently placed bench. The weather was improving and soon afterwards we were able to remove our waterproofs.

We walked through Stevington, and left by way of an attractive post mill, then across fields to Bromham. Here we initially walked past modern houses and a little shopping centre, then we turned right and eventually cut across the attractive Bromham Common, then down an alleyway past some houses and out onto a road.

We turned left and across the 26 arches of Bromham Bridge, which Wikipedia tells me carried the A428 until 1986, “but fortunately for the bridge, and the rest of the village, it was bypassed”. Even with a much lighter volume of traffic it was quite tricky to walk across, since there is no pavement, but there were good views of the river, with a heron posing helpfully. On the other side of the Bridge we turned right along a path which led under the modern A428 (and my route to Sherington) then between the river and the A428 on a tarmacked path which was more attractive than it sounds. We were able to get down to the river occasionally, and there were good views to Biddenham Church.

Eventually we climbed up to the A428 and crossed it again at the roundabout where we had entered the modern “village” of Great Denham by road this morning. We followed the road for a short distance, then forked right past the school and a nearly complete medical centre (with its dispensary currently in a portacabin) then out onto a building site. The path has been re-routed slightly and the signs weren’t great, but we managed to find the route, helped partly by the sight of other people in the distance. The path heads straight down towards Kempston, then back along a small tributary leading to the River Great Ouse. It was not the best walking of the day, but when I sat down for a brief rest I found myself on a level with attractive meadow flowers.

We reached the newly built houses and were sent on a diversion because of a partly built cycle path by the river. Our interpretation of when to return to the river was clearly incorrect; after walking up a path past houses, along Greenkeepers Road (just down from where the car was parked) and back to the river on the first available road, we found ourselves still in the middle of the works, so we just edged our way around the barriers and walked along the half-built cycle path, as others were doing. I was tired and not in the best of tempers by this stage and I can’t say I find modern estates of this ilk attractive; I’m sure that the houses are very comfortable, but the style of building houses that appear to be of different ages (e.g. mock Georgian) meets our family description of “toytown”, so much so here that we half expected some Lego people to appear around the corner.

We left the modern houses behind us and continued along the river, now with much more straightforward terraces of 1960s houses to our left. This is Ranworth Walk, where Richard’s Bedford Grandma used to live, so we left the river and climbed up to take a closer look. Goodness knows what the current occupants thought of the batty couple photographing their houses! We returned to the car by way of toytown, then drove back to Sharnbrook for the other car and on to the Marston Moretaine Travelodge, [at the time] our usual overnight accommodation when I need to be in Milton Keynes early the following day [we later discovered a lovely Premier Inn in the middle of toytown].

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