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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.

Saturday 27 October 2018

Saturday Walk – A Saturday Saunter Along the Greensand Ridge from Lidlington to Flitwick

SWC Walk 232:  Lidlington to Flitwick T=SWC.232

Distance:  13.7 Miles or 22.0 km (with short cuts of up to about 2.5 miles/4 km available in the instructions)

Difficulty:  6 out of 10 (4 or 5 if one or more short cuts used)

Train:  Take the 9:13 West Midlands Birmingham New Street train from Euston Station, changing at Bletchley (arriving 9:49 and departing 10:01), eventually arriving at Lidlington at 10:22. Return trains from Flitwick are Thameslink Services on the hour and half hour to London Bridge and various other Central London stations. Buy a day return to Lidlington.

This varied walk beings in Marston Vale and takes you up to and along the Bedfordshire Greensand Ridge through mixed woods and open heathland to historic Ampthill.  It also passes the atmospheric ruins of Houghton House and across Flitwick Moor, one of the most important wetland sites in the Southeast. You can find more information about the walk and download the walk instructions here.

The recommended lunch stop is the Prince of Wales in Ampthill (princeofwales-ampthill.com / 01525 840 50) 5 miles/8.1 km into the walk. However, there are also various other choices available in Ampthill, as well as, further along the route in Maulden. Flitwick offers tea and other late afternoon refreshments in a number of places suggested in the walk instructions.

Enjoy the walk!

2 comments:

Austen said...

The best train appears to be:

09.13 from Euston getting to Lidlington at 10.22

David Colver said...

n=3 people on the 0913 from Euston, in w=initially_golden_sunshine_progressively_darkening_to_heavy_rain_just_as_we_reached_the_end. I expected more to take this last opportunity for a longer walk before the lights get turned off for five months. Perhaps others came on a later train.

The recommended lunch stop, the Prince of Wales pub in Ampthill, turned out to be shut and empty inside, without any explanatory sign. Small pools of light in the dark showed that there was power to the lager taps and fridges and it was by no means boarded up. We doubled back to the White Hart, which has a slightly chain feel, but served decent food quickly. One of the three took the 1630 back to London; the others made the 1700, detained by tea and cake in a branch of Costa visible just beyond the station and open until 1700.

There are some passages in this walk that have good views across the countryside, interspersed with others that are less memorable.