Bedford Gurdwara and River - A Short Circular Palm Sunday Stroll

In which we take a short post-Sunday lunch stroll around Bedford Gurdwara, and I get all annoyed at people who think it's their right to shout at other people in the street.

Map: None used
Time: 30 mins
Distance: Not very long... half a mile?

Rating: Super Easy Walk. I didn't even have to change my shoes.

This walk was only a short one, and doesn't require special shoes., but it does fill the important gap on a sunny Sunday afternoon in between having lunch and it being time to justifiably go and get an icecream.

We started our walk at Bedford's Guru Nanak Gurdwara and headed along the path to its left towards the river. The Gurdwara is worth a look in itself - it's a fabulous white meringue of a building diagonally opposite a mosque; in fact, the whole of Bedford appears to fold its arms, raise an eyebrow and say "So, that whole thing about multiculturalism not working, eh? Explain that to me again?". Which is nice, really, because while me and my friends were wandering round feeding ducks, going to the park and then hunting down Kulfi icecream and sating my ever-keen lust for gulab jamun, another friend who is half Chinese-Malaysian elsewhere in the country was having vile children shout ethicity-related insults at her and her children while the father of these little delights watched on.

"Do people still do that?" announced my husband when I told him what had happened. Sadly, indeed so. Again, this was a man who late at night in Euston station asked me why I wasn't eating the crisps we'd just bought, and I had to tell him that he'd never been a woman over a size 14 seen eating anything as the pubs chuck out. The less gentlemanly members of society can be quite vocal if they see you doing that. So sadly, yes, people do shout at others in the street. It's shit.

Bedford river. Not enough ducks.

Anyway, walking. Head past the Gurdwara and continue towards the river. The view was only slightly marred by a group of drunks appearing from under the trees and throwing their cans on the grass. Once at the river, we glared balefully at the river for having a lack of ducks to feed, but it is very pretty nonetheless.

Turn right along the path by the river towards a number of really beautiful willows, much enjoyed by small children for running in and out of. As you continue along this path, you get further views of the Gurdwara.

I'm about to sound really middle class here, but it's the lack of manners that gets me. Who do these people are who think its fine to yell abuse at others? Well, sadly my friend found the answers for me this weekend - they're the ones who have been doing it since they were kids and their parents don't correct them. If in years to come I had found my son shouting anything at anyone in the street I would have some serious words to say to him about my disappointment in his behaviour.

As we continued along the river and did find some ducks to feed, and the view was very pretty.

A few years ago, while waiting to have a meeting with a couple of female students, another male student from another department made a leery. lairy comment at my girls as he passed. I gave him my opinion on this subject and later emailed his tutor reinforce the message about the lack of appropriacy of this behaviour in a learning environment. In the classroom with my students, I apologised on his behalf and reiterated how this was completely inappropriate, and they pretty much shrugged and said "It wasn't all that bad."

It was their acceptance that upset me; this was their life. Having total strangers make smutty comments was normal for them; it was a minor annoyance, like making tea to discover you've run out of milk.

Not long down this route, the path moves slightly away from the river, and a path leads off the the right, doubling back on the route you've taken. Follow this path under the willows, and then take the left hand fork leading you to the path you first came to. Turn left and return to the Gurdwara.


















Things I Learnt

• Bedford is the place to go to source a number of delicious sub-Indian continent related sweeties. This a good thing. They are also highly calorific in their deliciousness, and therefore must be saved for special occasions!
• Where are all the ducks when you want to feed them?
• Just don't shout at people in the street. It doesn't make anyone happy. Go home and have a cup of tea instead.

Totternhoe Knolls via the Nature Reserve (Circular Walk)

In which I walk through the weird yellow-green nature reserve in Totternhoe Knolls, and inadvertently turn my son into a girl by putting the 'wrong' clothes on him.

Ordnance Survey: Explorer 192
Distance: 2.5 miles approx
Time: 60mins

Rating: Moderate (some steep up and downs - a faff when it's muddy)

Well, back at work this week, and after last week's worrying over the nursery I was then presented with a piece on Radio 4 about child starvation, followed by hearing about the shenanigans of alcoholic parents, followed by a trip on a bus which included a staggering display of generally poor interpersonal skills between a mother and toddler also travelling. In short, I was reminded that maybe putting your child in nursery is not the worst thing ever. We may yet survive. I will keep you posted.

Anyway, eager to get out after last week's snow, I enjoyed a wander over Totternhoe Knolls. Starting in the carpark as with the last walk, go up the steps, bear right at the top and then left. However, unlike last time when I went through the gate on the right, this time I continued forward along the path I was on.

The path takes you up a gentle rise, and the higher you go the better views you get of Totternhoe & the surrounding countryside through the hedge on your left. Had it been a nice day it would have been lovely indeed, but it was damp and misty and cold. On a nice day I'm sure it's lovely, however.

During the snow, there was one thing I did do aside from insist the Chap walked to the shed and back - I dragged our off-road pram 'The Beast' out from under the stairs and wheeled ol' Chap-chops off to toddler group (why no sling? It was sheet ice underfoot, and while I am happy babywearing in the snow, it was so slippy I decided a pram would be better for us that day). He marched up and down with a baby walker for a bit, and then we went over to play with the wooden puzzles. There was a lady there doing a magic roundabout puzzle while he grandson drove a pedal car around the floor, and we did the idle polite chat thing. The older they get the faster they move. The problems with molars. How the Chap is really only interested in a toy that includes wheels or is a ball. By this time, the Chap was showing interest in one of the easy wooden puzzles. He picked up the circle, bashes it on the table a bit, and then neatly slotted it back in place. "Hooray!" I cried, as you do when a small child makes a minor achievement (which the Chap has now learnt, and makes a noise like the Fonz every time something pleases him). "Ah!" said the woman opposite me, "Clever girl!".

And here's the thing- I'd been sitting there blathering about him and he and his and I'm sure I'd used his name too for a good 5 minutes, but something had been talking louder than I'd been. Really very vocal. It had had an awful lot to say. It had been this shirt:

Warning! This shirt will make your child a girl!

Continue along the path - for a good while it was quite unmuddied as there is a structured surface (ish) to it. The further you go along, however, the squelchier it becomes. A few paths can be seen going off this one, but ignore them and stay on this main path. Finally, you will reach a dogleg that takes the path down the hill. Undecided about which way to go, I stood and looked at the map. I was also struck by the weirdness of the landscape of the nature reserve to the left of the path. Mossy, damp, weird teletubby-esque lumps and bumps, like a mogul field without the snow. It's either what happened after some quarrying was left to go back to nature, or the result of some serious bombing.

You're not going into the nature reserve yet, however - stick to the path, which now became very clarty with mud and I proceeded with caution down the slope.

Follow the path down the hill. It will then curve to the left. To be honest, it's a pretty dull green lane - it may be more exciting in the spring/summer, but right now it's sticky with mud, grey and pretty tedious.





Not long after, however, after the path swings to the left you find a metal gate in the hedge to your left. Going through this takes you into the nature reserve and its odd landscape. I found it strangely menacing - the sort of place you are likely to either find or become a body, I thought. Joyfully, neither event happened - we just got a bit damp, but that was the mist.

Take the path bearing slightly to the right of straight ahead (after the gate you can either go hard right or this slightly right, much like the options our government seem to be fond of at the moment) and take the path in between two knolls.

So, some time after the initial 'clever girl' incident, we went for a pub lunch with my parents. I put the Chap in the shirt again because it's sort of a rugby-style shirt, and the first time my father met him he gave him a small talk on which was most likely to be his standing leg and which was most likely to be his kicking leg, so I thought it an appropriate piece of clothing to put on my son. The Chap enjoys walking in places that aren't our house, so holding onto my hand (he can't do it without yet) he marched across the floor with that slightly disturbing toddler goose-step. A grandparent-aged couple on a table nearby cooed at him. "Oooo, you're doing well, aren't you. How old is she?"
"He's a boy." I said. They did the usual polite blustering about being terribly sorry and I made the general polite noises about how no-one can tell when they're this age anyway.
"He was wearing pink, you see." They said.
"But it's a rugby shirt!" My father spluttered.

You pays your money and you takes your gendered choice, it seems.

Obviously, this whole gender segregation of colour thing is a marketing tool - if you have a girl and buy everything with pink & flowers, if you have a boy second you'll simply have to go and buy a whole new load of clothes because otherwise he will clearly grow up to be gay and that would be appalling (someone this week said to me after I'd mentioned how The Chap was very active and allover the place investigating how "Well, you'd rather that than them being all sissyish, really, wouldn't you?", which I'm afraid got a rather firm "He can do whatever he wants to do" intoned from me.). But it pervades everything. There's an American Korean (or Korean American) called JeongMee Yoon who has done a series of photos called The Pink and Blue Project, in which she takes pictures of children with their pink or blue toys. She says "The saccharine, confectionary pink objects that fill my images of little girls and their accessories reveal a pervasive and culturally manipulated expression of femininity” and a desire to be seen. To make these images, I arrange and display the cotton - candy colored belongings of several children in their rooms. When I began producing the pink images, I became aware of the fact that many boys have a lot of blue possessions. Customers are directed to buy blue items for boys and pink for girls. "

JeongMee Yoon's Jake and his Blue Things

It's pretty staggering after a while - go and have a look at the full project so far here.

I can understand this colour-coding for children, particularly babies when they all look the same. A friend of mine said she was grateful when she saw a colour-coded baby, because then you don't have to go through the awkward 'is that a boy? Girl? If I say 'aw, isn't she cute' am I going to really offend the parent when it turns out to be a boy?'. However, looking at Jake and his blue things, it spreads beyond clothes, and it reaches a point where it's really hard to buy clothes for a boy in shops that aren't black, blue, dark green or brown (there are occasional spurts of orange, to be fair. Also, have you ever tried to find a piece of clothing for a boy that has a cat on it? Best of luck to you - girls get pink and cats, boys get blue and dogs. No boy, evidently, has ever liked a cat, ever. My child is clearly some kind of masculine feline-fondness prodigy).

What gets my goat is the way this spreads and spread until activities become segregated and it becomes a major effort to find, say, some sort of 'playing house' toy that isn't bright pink (although the Early Learning Centre do a blue iron. It's rare enough that it's worth reporting). Construction toys, similarly, get heavily marketed towards boys whereas girls get the pink treatment again, as indicated in this video that ChapDad showed me this week.

So while I'm not totally anti colour-coding per se, it's when it starts to infringe upon the activities you may be choosing to do that vexes me. There are some 'girly' things that I suck at, and ChapDad does a lot better - ironing, for instance, and folding. Conversely, when it comes to catching the live mice that the cat brings in, the ChapDad retires quietly from the room while I do a larger version of the 'spider in a glass'  technique. I should stand on a chair and fear for it to climb my skirts, I know, but I don't. Such a failure....

Back in the nature reserve, you will come to a fork - take the left hand one and you will eventually be led down the hill and onto the road. Cross the road and turn left, continuing down it until you pass a farm on your right, then take the next bridleway leading up the hill on your left. When you reach the top, you rejoin the path you started on - turn right, and retrace your steps to the carpark.





Things I Learnt

• There is something that feels a bit odd about Totternhoe Knolls. I've walked there twice and it's not that I don't like it, it just seems to have a bit of an atmosphere.
• In my opinion, you can't make children like something because it's a certain colour. You can influence a purchase, but it's the difference between me asking if something I want comes in red (which happens quite a lot), or me buying something simply because it is red (which doesn't really happen).
• I didn't like Lego as a child. I liked Playmobil. My favourite was the ghost. You could take his sheet off and move his beard up and down (such was the joy of the Playmobil beards) and attach the ball-and-chain to other characters you didn't like. His candelabra was also very useful for hosting banquets. And he glowed in the dark. Amazing! Would I have liked it better had it been pink? Don't be so silly - that's the wrong colour for ghosts to be....

Totternhoe Quarry (Circular Walk)

In which I admire the chalk landscape around the Totternhoe Knolls, see lots of pretty coloured berries and unburden myself of my fear of putting The Chap in nursery. Sorry for getting all maudlin. It happens now and again (indeed, it happened the other day, and my husband made me google pictures of Aidan Turner until I shut up. "Stop reading the interviews!" he cried. "Just look at the pictures of the hot man.". To my shame, I must confess I quickly became distracted from Mr Turner and we ended up watching videos on The Hobbit blog, which I think illustrates why my husband and I get along so well).

Ordnance Survey: Explorer 192
Distance: 3.5 miles approx (not sure yet as I've misplaced the map. Will get out a bit of string when I find it and will let you know).
Time: 90mins (still feeling a bit ill)

Rating: Easy-Moderate Walk (Bare minimum of map-reading!)

I should have been going to Occupy London this week, but from Monday - Tuesday I was so full of cold that it was all I could do to leave my bed, let alone traipse round London I was fine by Wednesday, but the thought of venturing into the capital while the strikes were on and risk being kettled with a baby did not appeal. Ideally, I wanted to avoid a conversation that would sound something like this:

"Let me go, Officer! I was just going for a walk!"
"Past Occupy London on the day of the strikes, madam? What's your job?"
"Well, I'm a teacher."
"Member of the Union, are you?"
"Well, yes, but honestly-"
 "Grumpy about your pension are you?"
"Well, yeah, I'm going to have to work until I die and frankly, I've seen the way 16 year olds treat all teachers over, say, 60, and I think the last 15 years of my career as I work up to 75 are going to be horrific."
"So, you're a teacher, a Union member, sympathising with the strikers and you just happened to be walking past Occupy London on the day of the greatest mass-Union action in your lifetime? And you're not involved? And this one's got bells on it, darlin'".

So instead I left the ChapDad heading off towards to picket line and went and hid in the Totternhoe Quarry/ Knolls. Actually, I'm doing a lot of hiding at the moment. I'm not sleeping well, and it's almost completely to do with the fact that, when I return to work, I am going to have to put The Chap in nursery. It makes me feel sick. It terrifies me. I have a barely-contained panic about it. In fact, when I think about it I find myself sort of... running in my head, looking for doors, looking for a way out. It stimulates my fight or flight, and it all happens in my head.

I parked in the Totternhoe Knolls car park (follow the brown signs from the B489), which also has some picnic tables. These must be appealing when it's not December.

Leave the car park from the back (through the gap in the brown fences) and climb the steps. As you come through the fence, turn right up the rise for a very short distance  When you reach the main path, turn left and then take the next right down a wide-ish byway that takes you in between a field on the right and part of the nature reserve on the left. Continue down this road for about a kilometre.

The ploughed field and a chalk cliff left from
quarrying, looking all lunar landscapey.

I like walking. Walking is simple. It drowns out the noise in my head. You have the world, and you have a picture of the world on your map, and you look at the picture and see how the world matches it and then you go, step by step by step by step and it is all so beautifully simple. The fear is simple too, of course. I feel so panicked about having to leave the Chap in nursery that some days I fear I will start to scream and if I let that happen it will never stop. It's strange to try and explain it, because my work is part time, and what with the ChapDad sorting out his hours it looks like the Chap will only have to be in nursery for a day and a half. A day and a half! How ridiculous to get wound up about it! It's nothing! We went to a Bumps & Babes thing on Monday and within ten minutes he was on the other side of the room, as far away from me as possible and investigating something with wheels! Frankly, put us in a room with other babies and I may as well not be there - there are much more interesting people to be poking in the eye. But what it feels like is that there's something in me hardwired, something evolutionary in me that tells me this is all so wrong. My mother sat in a pub after dropping me off at University for the first time and cried into her half pint, and now I understand why. Because there's this thing, a voice in my head that when I start thinking about putting the Chap in nursery cries mybabymybabymybabymybaby. Something primeval in me is crawling up the walls and telling me that to leave my child is all wrong.

But there's no choice for us. The mortgage doesn't pay itself on the ChapDad's salary. Or at least, the mortgage does, but there's no heat or light or food or Counsel Tax or petrol or electricity or water or travel.

Pass by the wooded(ish) rise on your right an continue down the road until you reach a byway that heads off to your right. After doing this, you'll be on this road for quite some time, so you might as well settle down to plod, plod, plodding and enjoying the pretty berries standing out on the now leafless hedges.

The weird thing is, I panic over a day and a half of The Chap in nursery, but if I think about it, and I did have a choice, I think my choice would be to return to work. Money no object, I would happily tootle off to work and leave the Chap with a childminder/nanny and not have a second thought about it. It's the concept of nursery that frightens me. The more my life has continued, the more education has gone away from teaching people stuff for the joy of it and more standardised tests, more measurement, more institutionalisation. Every level of development is assessed and fretted over. And I feel sick that my child will have to go into that, particularly so young. Everyone's child goes into the machine and 4, and that I'm sort of prepared for. When we were thinking about having a baby, what we'd do with it when I had to go back to work wasn't something we even thought about, to be honest. It's fine! I thought. By one, he's won't even be a baby any more, he'll be a toddler! He can hold his own for a day. And yes, it's probably true. But the voice in my head cries mybabymybabymybaby, and it will cry that from the first time he goes to nursery, to his first day at school, to the day he leaves home. I never expected having a child to feel like this. I never thought it would be so... raw...

One grey view you pass by on
the long road around the knolls

Finally you leave the chalk grassland behind and start to head down a tarmaced path along the side of a green field, heading towards the outskirts of Dunstable. The path forms a dog-leg to the right, and shortly after this you come to a cross-roads from which you can see the Ivinghoe Beacon and the Chiltern's Gateway Centre.







At this crossroads, turn right and continue along this path. When you come to another crossroads, turn left heading towards the big white chalk cliff you first saw at the beginning of the walk, although now from this angle it looks like this.




When you reach the end of the field, turn right and climb up the rise that has had part of dug away to make the cliff, enjoying views of the plain in one direction and Dunstable and the Downs in the other. The rise isn't arduous, and we were soon at the top and on our way down. As you descend, you will recognise the path you met at the start of the walk. Turn left down the road you came up and pop back through the gap in the fence to descend the steps back to the car park.

Dunstable and the Downs.

Things I learnt

• Being a grown-up sucks. There's a lot of fretting about the world and the country and our situation in general to be done.
• The fact that my go-to name for this area is the 'Totternknoll Hos' and my husband's is 'The Rottentrolls' clearly indicates which one of us has spent more time in nightclubs, and which spent part of their youth painting the occasional Warhammer figurine.
• Chalk is grey, berries are pretty colours, and wandering around near both is a generally good distraction. Better than moping around at home, anyway. Although should Aidan Turner wish to come round and offer some distraction, I could see if I have a window in my schedule...

Dunstable Downs Circular Walk, Via Bison Hill and Whipsnade Tree Cathedral

In which I don't go on the walk I originally intended to do, but have a nice wander round in the sunshine and am generally quite jolly.



Ordnance Survey number: Explorer 181
Distance: 4 miles approx
Time: 90 minutes




Rating: Easy-Moderate (Mostly flat, but map reading skills required. Also contains a few hazardous earth steps down the side of a bank).




My husband is a massive feminist. The F word gets a funny old press - it's got linked to a bit of fundamentalist strain, and fundamentalists of any sort are never a good thing. Most of us just want to have a cup of tea and get on with stuff - extremes are impossible to deal with. But yes, in short, men can be feminists, and I will shortly explain how this made me go all girly and produced what my husband refers to as my "Oh, Mr Darcy!" response.

Autumn has appeared, and there's been a very pleasant bite to the air along with some lovely sunny weather. That, however, was not the reason I went for a walk. The reason was due to an 'accident' with a packet of the new Cadbury's Crunchie biscuits, and I felt the need to burn off the calories.

The walk started at the Chiltern Gateway Centre on Dunstable Downs, where it was a lovely day and people were out flying kites. For a £2 car parking fee (if you're not a National Trust member), there's a shiny Eco Visitor's Centre with little seating areas inside and outside and the ability to get a cup of tea and go to the loo and change your baby's nappy. Not all at once; that would be weird.

Head down from the Visitor's Centre towards an iron lump. It may look like modern art, but it is in fact part of the eco ventilation system for the Visitor's Centre -it does something clever with the winds around the Downs to pull air underground which is then used to heat or cool the building. As rusting iron lumps go I think it's quite nice. There were a lot of rusting iron lumps in the Palace Gardens at Versailles when I was there over the summer, and I didn't like those. Incongrous, rather. I quite liked this one, however. And it's useful, too!

Turn left at the big iron lump and head walk along the clearly marked Icknield Way. All around Whipsnade, there are some really pretty waymarkers that look like they hold giant Fruit Gums with interesting designs stamped into them. It's supposed to be something to do with the history of the place, I think - there's an ammonite on the yellow disc. It's probably the sort of thing that will be dug up thousands of years from now and historians will intone "Ah... Some sort of ritual significance, possibly religious".





 The views are impressive - below the Downs it's incredibly flat and seems to stretch out forever. Not only can you watch sheep, and farmers dealing with their fields far below, but you can also watch gliders being pulled up into the sky and then flying around. It's useful that they go up so high, and my reasons for saying this will become apparant later...

But back to my husband, the enormous feminist. He works in an office with a group of women of a certain age (the sort who can sometimes be uncharitably referred to as 'a coven'), with whom he gets on very well. He's pleasant and well-presented and polite and notices when people have had their hair cut or are wearing new shoes, and the ladies of his office have somewhat adopted him. He went into work to find the following forwarded email had been printed out and left in the middle of the communal table:

New evening classes for men!

All are welcome open to men only

NB: Due to the complexity and level of difficulty, each course will accept a maximum of eight participants each.
Sign up early and get a discount on registration.
The course covers two days, and topics covered in this course include:

Day one

How to fill ice cube trays

Step by step guide with slide presentation

Loo rolls - do they grow on the holders?
Roundtable discussion

Differences between laundry basket & floor
Practising with hamper. Pictures and graphics.

The after dinner dishes & silverware - do they levitate and fly into kitchen sink or dishwasher by themselves?
Debate among a panel of experts.

Loss of virility: losing the remote control to your significant other
Help line and support groups

Learning how to find things, starting with looking in the right place instead of turning the house upside down while screaming.
Open forum

Day two

Empty milk cartons: do they belong in the fridge or the bin?
Group discussion and role play

Health watch - bringing her flowers is not harmful to your health.
Powerpoint presentation

Real men ask for directions when lost
Real life testimonial from the one man who did.

Is it genetically impossible to sit quietly as she parallel parks?
Driving simulation

Living with adults: basic differences between your mother and your wife
Online class and role playing

How to be the ideal shopping companion
Relaxation exercises, meditation and breathing techniques

Remembering birthdays, anniversaries, other important dates and calling when you're going to be late
Bring your calendar or pda to class

Getting over it. Learning how to live with being wrong all the time

Individual counsellors available

Now, I am a fan of women, but this sort of gubbins is unhelpful. When my husband came home and told me about this, I sputtered about how if it had been the other way round, and he was the only woman in an office of men, one would hope this sort of thing would be discouraged by the line manager (just to be clear here, his line manager is a man). It wouldn't be considered acceptable, I opined, finger either waving in the air or tapping firmly on the table. Treat others how you yourself would like to be treated, I pronounced.

"Well, yes," said my husband. "But that's not the reason I don't like it". And then he went on to explain. I'm afraid I liked his explanation so much there may have been some girlish giggling and flapping about.

Because having been faced with the forwarded email on the communal table, he responded by placing the following note next to it:

I find this offensive, and not simply because I am a man. Neither is it as simple as putting the shoe on the other foot and imagining what would happen if an equivalent list of evening courses for women was put on this table. I find this offensive for a different reason.

This is sexist, and it is sexist towards women.

The great strides that have been taken by women into industries, professions and boardrooms necessitate reciprocal strides by men into the domestic sphere. These strides have been taken and are being taken in the face of ridicule from the media and from women collectively seeking solidarity in documents such as this. We find this amusing primarily because a man in a domestic setting is a figure of fun. This is part of the backlash against women's liberation, in which this document is taking an active and self-defeating part. The author, in seeking to deny the cultural acceptability of a man who is capable around the house, is effectively policing the borders of women's own domestic drudgery.

I challenge this, and invite you to do the same.

I am so his fangirl.

Leaving the shameless fawning over my husband where it is, let me distract you with large bovine creatures. Bison, to be exact; this indicated that I was approaching the boundary of Whipsnade Zoo. I tried to take a picture, but it was pretty rubbish. Bison are awfully big; do go and have a look.

Turn left, continuing to follow the clearly marked Icknield Way  - it's a really obvious path between two hedgerows. The sun shone prettily through another glass waymarker, and I liked the way somone had left stones on top of it like an offering (possibly ritual significance?), so - not expecting to see it again - I took a picture.

I passed one turning onto a footpath on my left, and continued forward until another left hand turn leads you towards Whipsnade Tree Cathedral (indicating worship of nature Gods, I hear future archaeologists declaim). There's quite a narrow gap you have to wiggle through (well, you do if you've got a baby on your front and a knapsack on your back) before you pass through a field auditioning for 'Pastoral Idyll'. At the corner of this field you go into the back gate of Whipsnade Tree Cathedral, which is one of those places we've often threatened to go to, but never quite made it there. I didn't quite make it there this time, either, but it does look very nice.

Whipsnade Tree Cathedral

Follow the boundary until you pass the obelisk and the gate, and then immediately almost double back on yourself. You follow the path until you pop out onto a single-lane white road, cross over and bear right into the woodland strip of Sallowsprings Nature Reserve.

It was at this point I went wrong. I thought I had gone further than I had done, and thought a mast had been removed when I suspect it was there all along - I just never found it. Confused as to where exactly I was now, I did not do what common sense dictates. I knew vaguely where I was, so what I should have done was - wait for it - looked at the map. I should have stopped and had a good look. Instead, I did what I usually do when I feel a bit lost - got to a signpost and followed the path I recognised a name for. I knew I was on the Chiltern Way, so it couldn't be all that bad. The Chap had been fed in the last hour and was still napping in his carrier, and if the worst came to the worst it would be an hour to retrace my steps to the beginning, and a spell of bandaging of my wounded ego.

Looking back on The Field Of Confusion

Following signs for the Chiltern Way I turned left through the Field Of Confusion. My sense of direction is bad, and so I was pretty disoriented, but I sort of knew the  area I was in, so it wasn't a cause for panic. I was aware that the chances of me getting to my husband to pick him up from work at the time we had arranged was now unlikely, so I phoned him with the merry cry of 'It's fine! I know vaguely where I am! I'm still on top of a Down!". I'm sure this filled him with confidence.






Mercifully, however, while I was on the phone a glider rose up into the air to my right. Having seen the gliders earlier and knowing where they were coming from, my sense of direction was restored, and I just needed to get over there somehow.

At the end of the field there were some hazardous earth steps down to a strangely familiar path. I turned right, heading in the direction of the glider. My suspicions of where I was were confirmed when next to the path ahead of me I saw...

I thought the path seemed familiar. Maybe the stones on top were an offering after all - to the God of Those With Poor Map Reading Skills And A Dubious Sense of Direction, perhaps. We'll call him Keith. Thank you, Keith, God of Those With Poor Map Reading Skills And  A Dubious Sense of Direction!

I got to have another look at the bison (really very big), and retraced my steps, enjoying a nice view of the Down as it heads towards Dunstable. I had been facing the other way the first time, and so had failed to appreciate it.

It was not a long journey back to the Visitor's Centre and the car, and so despite the unintended route my walk had taken, it all turned out rather well. I was even only 15 minutes late picking up my husband from work. Thanks for that, Keith.

Things I Learnt

• The Chiltern Gateway Centre is a building that breathes. It does something terribly clever with air underground, that works as both cooling and heating, and when the building gets too hot, windows by the roof automatically open and let hot air rush out. Very clever!
• When I find myself disorientated, I should not hare off in the direction of the nearest signpost with a vaguely recognisable name. I should slow down and take a good long look at the map. That's what it's there for.
• You can look at anything and declare that it may have ritual significance, possibly religious.

The chap chills out in his car seat while waiting
for me to take my boots off.