Introduction

It has to be said, a circular walk around the edge of Milton Keynes Unitary Authority was never going to be one of our primary objectives. It was too far from Reading for Jus & Cat to join in, and – and let’s be honest here – it was just too near Milton Keynes! In fact our next “official” Long Distance Walk was due to be a combination of the Icknield Way and the Lee Valley Walk.

However, Jim had just moved with his job to Milton Keynes, and, as his brother, I would obviously be staying over with him in “MK” every now and then for a few drinks (and, no doubt, a few more). A gentle stroll around the edge of MK seemed like it might offer a bit of a hangover cure, and so I agreed to his request that we walk the Milton Keynes Boundary Walk on an occasional basis, whenever I was staying up there with him.

The Milton Keynes Boundary Walk was originally developed by Christopher Meredith, with help from Milton Keynes Borough Council and the local branches of the Ramblers’ Associations and the Long Distance Walkers’ Association. Originally a leaflet was published with maps and a description of the route. The leaflet is not available any more, and the route was never waymarked. Fortunately the route did make it onto the Ordnance Survey maps of the area, and it was these that we would be using as our primary source of information for the walk. However, we were also grateful that two other individuals had gone to the trouble of ensuring details of the route were kept alive – Ian Andrews of Milton Keynes Ramblers and Pete Collins of the Petes-Walks website have both published their own accounts of the entire route on the interweb.

However, even Ian and Pete’s accounts failed to rouse any degree of enthusiasm in me. I have to be honest, I wasn’t looking forward to this walk...