Introduction
Having previously done a walk which basically looped south from Ridgmont to Lidlington, Mum and I decided to do the other half of the circle: north via Cranfield. Again, we were travelling on the local rail line. This time, though, we managed to start at the same station.
Ridgmont to Cranfield
We started along a footpath which was apparently an old 'wagonway'. (I think that's basically a railway that was powered by horses. It looked like an old railway, being in a cutting about wide enough for some tracks.)
Mum had done the same route last time, but on climbing up to the blue bridge, this time we crossed it to the left instead of going right toward the Round House.
We then had to take our life into our hands in crossing a busy A road. A lorry driver kindly slowed to let us cross. This led into a park.
A footpath beside fields and farmland, skirting woods at a few points, took us toward Cranfield. The official footpath routes were signposted everywhere except where there might be some doubt; we took the wrong turn, but were able to figure out our location and get back on track without too much difficulty.
We arrived in the outskirts of Cranfield, which had a few interesting buildings.
Before too long we reached Cranfield church, at which point it began to rain; after investigating the church, we ate our sandwiches in its convenient porch.
Cranfield to Lidlington
We walked through the centre of Cranfield, which confirmed my previous suspicion that the place is a bit of a hole. However, it did provide a newsagent which sold us chocolate. After that we were basically heading southeast toward Lidlington, past a preserved woodland area and toward a section mysteriously designated as 'workings' on the map.
So the 'workings' turned out to be a landfill site - fine and all, except that around that area, the footpaths on the ground didn't seem to match those on the map.
After getting somewhat lost (and muddy), we eventually managed to find a place where the map matched the ground. This took us back to the road and into Lidlington, except that we decided to take the scenic route along footpaths rather than the road - fine, except the footpaths turned out to be directly across ploughed fields of extremely sticky mud. Still, we managed to clean off some of the mud before getting back on the train at Lidlington...