Bedfordshire

Walk Details:
Date: 1/1/2006
Total ascent: 31m/ 102ft
Total distance walked: 0.84 miles
Walk difficulty: 1/10
Enjoyment rating: 4/10
Best bits: Huge views, getting a souvenir county top pencil, first ice cream of the year
Worst bits: Bitterly cold, possibly the worst honeypot yet
Walkers: Anth, Jim
Car Parking: There are huge visitor car parks off the B4541 all along the crest of the ridge; we parked at TL 008 200

Top details:
Name: Dunstable Downs
County top number: 115 of 205
Grid reference: TL 00880 19422 Map
Height above sea level: 243m/ 797ft
How nice was the top? 3/10
Views: 4.5/10
Description/Notes: The highest point in Bedfordshire is marked by a trig point; a nearby earth bank is actually higher, but is a temporary structure that will probably be demolished when the new visitor centre is built.

The Walk:

We hadn’t really planned a walk here; there weren’t any obvious circular walks on the map. Our plan was simply to park as close as possible to the top, check out the viewpoint shown on the map and bag the trig. We were quite astonished on reaching the top of the Downs to find that half the population of Bedfordshire seemed to have had the same idea. Huge car parks lining the ridge were chock full of day-trippers’ cars. It was understandable – from the top of the escarpment there were huge views across the flat lands to the northeast.

We parked in the first car park, and then wandered along a few hundred metres to a small building holding the visitor centre and a refreshments kiosk. We headed into the visitor centre, partly to see what was in there and partly because I needed a pen to record details of the tops we visited today. The very friendly and helpful staff in the centre, seeing our A4 printed map and GPS, assumed we were on some sort of treasure hunt. We were quick to correct them, and they didn’t seem surprised by our quest. They told us the trig point was only a few hundred metres up the hill, next to (oh joy!) the construction site of the new visitors centre, which was being built as this existing one could no longer cope with the huge volumes of visitors. They also sold me a Dunstable Downs pencil, and I was ecstatic to have a genuine county top souvenir!

Half of the day-trippers seemed to be huddled round the refreshment kiosk, eating bacon sarnies and drinking coffee and trying to stay out of the biting wind. For some perverse reason Jim decided he wanted an ice cream instead, and I went along with him on it. I didn’t enjoy it much – it seemed to be covered in a faint patina of bacon fat, plus it made by hands even colder – but it’s still pretty cool having an ice cream on a hilltop on New Year’s Day!

Ice cream in hands we ambled on up the hill, entirely failing to look like serious walkers (I hadn’t even bothered to put on my walking boots). We passed more car parks, and then re-emerged onto the B4541 at its junction with the why-is-it-called-that Isle of Wight Lane. Here there was a small stone pillar commemorating the chap who gave all this land to the public.

We wandered along the B4541 past the building site of the new visitor centre (smack bang on top of the hill) to reach the trig point. An earth bund around it was actually slightly higher, but we felt that might be destroyed to create access to the visitor centre. We can only hope that the trig point survives the changes.

Feeling very cold now we headed back down the gentle slope to the car at a brisk pace, wondering why this was such an enormously busy top – the biggest honeypot we’ve yet come across. Okay, it’s got great views, but what makes it more popular than - say - Leith Hill? We were a little bemused as we headed off to our final top of the day in Luton.