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This Week's Walks - Archive

Please see the Saturday Walker's Club This Week's Walks page.

This is an archive of walks done by the Saturday Walker's Club. You should only need to use this page if the SWC website is down.

Wednesday 4 November 2020

Wednesday Walk Bow Brickhill to Leighton Buzzard - Back, Buttermilk and Duncombe Woods, Great Brickhill, Rushmere Park, the River Ouzel and the Grand Union Canal

Book 1 Walk 41 - Bow Brickhill to Leighton Buzzard

Length: 14.7 km (9.1 miles)
Toughness: 2 out of 10 (upwards to 4 when very muddy)


London Euston: 10-15 hrs    West Midland Trains service to Birmingham New Street 
Arrive Bletchley: 10-49 hrs  Disembark
Leave Bletchley on bus service to Bedford: 11-01 hrs
Arrive Bow Brickhill station: 11-10 hrs

Return

Leighton Buzzard to Euston: trains at 16-07, 16-34, 16-54, 17-07, 17-42, 17-55, 18-09, 18-34 and later

Rail ticket: buy an off-peak day return to Bow Brickhill

This is likely to be our last posted walk for a month or so as we enter another period of lockdown on Thursday 05 November. I am unable to attend the walk myself but a fellow walk poster should be in attendance to "officiate" in my place. I look forward to the resumption of SWC mid-week walks hopefully in December or soon thereafter. 

We tend to avoid walks with replacement bus services, but today the "inconvenience" of a connecting bus at Bletchley only lasts for 9 minutes, so we will accept it today.

This is a short(ish), mostly woodland walk best walked at this time of year to enjoy some lovely late autumn leaf colour, particularly after lunch in Rushmere Park where the oak trees should be in full leaf colour.

After leaving Bow Brickhill station the route takes you up into, then down through, Back Wood, which is likely to be muddy to very muddy in places today. This wood is a bit of a pig all year round for slubberdub mud, so no bad thing when you extricate yourselves from it and make for the more genteel Buttermilk Wood. Onwards then through Duncombe Wood then along a track through farmland to the village of Great Brickill for lunch at the Old Red Lion pub, or for a picnic nearby. An alternative lunch stop on this walk comes in Rushmere Park - if its cafeteria is open today.

After Great Brickhill you have arguably the best bit of today's walk - the leg through Rushmere Park - an oak wood which should be in full leaf colour.  Then you have a leg above the River Ouzel before crossing over water meadows to join the Grand Union Canal for an early tea stop at the Globe Inn.  You then have a relaxing walk along the canal's tow path to the outskirts of Leighton Buzzard. The short walk from the town's bridge to the railway station is dreary but thankfully short: I am sure there must be some attractive parts to Leighton Buzzard but I have yet to discover them.
T=1.41

Walk Directions are here: L=1.41

3 comments:

Mr M Tiger said...

6 at the station on a w=largely-sunny day We had just congratulated ourselves on our neat, compliant number when, guess what. An awkward 7th turned up. So n=7 . That was easily solved by dividing into 6 + 1 slow one. The 6 steamed off using their gizmos and whatnot. Not so the slow one, an aficionado of the written word, who grappled with the directions in Back Wood. And grappled and grappled and went up and down that bridleway more times than the Duke of York wondering “where is the T junction where you go right and then right again”? (Answer: there isn't one. There is a cross-paths where you go right. Full stop.) By now the others were well on the way to their sumptuous repast in the Old Red Lion and the slow one continued across the A5 and down Little Brickhill Lane using Mr Google. Then on past the Old Red Lion not realising he was now in the lead. Fshoom. This lead was maintained through Rushmere Park, despite going astray more than once. The others finally caught up with him at the exit where he had to quickly snap out of it and look like he knew where he was. After this it was plain sailing – just follow the others, innit.
The Globe had shut at 2:30 so no 'tea'.
A nice walk. The others did 9 miles, I did about 12.There was mud.

Marcus said...

The directions in Back Wood at point eleven, which confused Mr Tiger, now corrected. The paths changed after the tree felling and path destruction a couple of year's ago.

Mr M Tiger said...

Yay!