Chapter 2: Trigspeditions

July 2020.  With the first lockdown lifted, I started looking online for a place to drive to where I could bag a few trigs.  Guildford wasn’t a million miles away, and there seemed to be quite a few on the way to Dorking.  A Trigpointing UK user had created and uploaded a zoomable aerial map of Great Britain, and overlaid it with little blue triangles to show where the pillars were.  Clicking on the triangles would bring up their bracket numbers, so this instantly became an essential tool for planning my “trigspeditions” (a perfectly cromulent word – I invented it myself) as I could draw up a long list of potential bags in a given area, cross-reference them against the visitor logs on the Trigpointing site, and narrow them down to an achievable short list.  I’d rule out those which were geographically difficult or inaccessible, or were behind Private or Keep Out signs, or which were guarded by overly curious livestock, or which required knocking on doors and asking permission (I’m keen to avoid people at the best of times, especially in pursuit of such a frivolous and ridiculous pastime as this, and never more so than in the wake of Covid).  And of course, I’d exclude any which were completely destroyed – I want to photograph something, after all!  There were still plenty left which I could find and bag without endangering myself or upsetting people, and I’ve no intention of trying to match trigpointing legend Rob Woodall’s incredible feat of bagging every single pillar.  For me, concrete-chasing is about having fun, and the day it stops being fun is the day it will *genuinely* stop being A Thing.  There were ten pillars on my shortlist by the time I’d done my prep work, and that was exciting because my previous record was six in one trip (of which three were unusually close to each other, and two more were in the same spot).  I scribbled down some rough notes on a side of A4, got in my car... 

...and proceeded to learn some very good lessons.
 
Lesson One:  Make Better Notes.  Write large so you can read them easily whilst driving, even with your increasingly failing eyesight.  Include road names, landmarks, and signs, especially at junctions.  Don’t leave parking to chance; find out where you can readily dump a Ford Focus before you set out.  And above all, don’t assume that you’re going to spot every pillar easily just because you’re in the rough vicinity of it – note where to turn off the pathways and exactly where the pillar is located.
 
Lesson Two:  You are unfit.  Which means you sweat lots in summertime.  Bring a kitchen roll, a can of deodorant, and a couple of changes of t-shirt to keep yourself fresh.  You burn easily, too, so sun cream is also an essential.
 
Lesson Three:  Lost moisture must be replaced.  Bring liquid refreshments.  Trigpointing is thirsty work, especially if you’re going to devote several hours solid to it.  Ice packs in cool bags or Tupperware tubs make excellent portable fridges.
 
Lesson Four:  The more you drink, the more you need to pee.  Whilst there were a lot of woodland pillars on this trip, that might not be true next time.  Make sure there’s somewhere for you to stop and go every couple of pillars.
 
Lesson Five:  Get a walking stick.  Apart from making the walk easier, you need something to whack nettles with.
 
Lesson Six:  That ridiculously long leather coat you’ve got?  That might actually be quite useful wherever there’s brambles.  Or barbed wire.
 
I think I made my first full trigspedition a lot harder than it should have been, although to be fair, there were a lot of woodland locations which would have been better explored in winter.  S3359 Redlands Wood and S3360 The Nower were both concealed behind a profusion of shoulder-height ferns, which rendered them near-impossible to spot.  S3361 Westhumble was on the edge of a field beside a wood, and the pillar was similarly well-hidden from both sides as a result.  S3787 August Hill and S3778 Dunley Wood also required leaving the path and traipsing through overgrown woodlands, which made progress slow.  At another time of year, or if I had planned these visits to the extent which I now do, I’d have no doubt found them a lot more quickly, and I might have had the time and energy to find all ten on my list.  As it was, I had to settle for seven, which didn’t make me unhappy – it was still more than I’d previously found in a single day; I still found all the pillars I actually attempted; and the reasonably substantial walk to S3339 Logmore Farm took me past a beautiful little waterfall, which was a lovely bonus to have.  I seem to recall saying afterwards that seven in a day was probably a bit too ambitious; in actual fact most of my subsequent trigspeditions have been a lot more successful.
 
I ventured out again just a fortnight later.  I’d long had my eye on a patch of military land south of Fleet which had three extant pillars on it.  S6534 Beacon Hill (Ewshot) looked like the easiest to access, and in fact I’d already bagged it on New Year’s Day, as part of the trip that included my most hated pillar (so far) at Blackbushe.  But then in May, there was an unexpected development: the sorry-looking remains of a fourth pillar, S5549 Bricksbury Hill previously thought destroyed, were discovered by a Trigpointing UK user.  Checking the firing times online, it looked like the military would be stood down on 1st August, and another Trigpointing UK user had uploaded a detailed description of a viable route to S5542 Miles Hill that didn’t involve barbed wire fences or uphill scrambles… now add to that a favourable weather forecast (I am very much a fairweather trigpointer) and the stars all seemed to be aligning, so I had a look on the map to see what else was in the vicinity.  Long story short, this trigspedition went like clockwork, took me to some very beautiful locations I’d never have otherwise visited, and added eight more pillars to my tally.  And every one of them was notable for one reason or another:  Miles Hill was the culmination of a scenic walk along a dusty tank track, and offered a fine view of Farnborough Airport; Bricksbury Hill wasn’t a fine example of a pillar, but there was a thrill in finding something that had been lost for so long, and the patch of woodland it stood in was very beautiful; S5548 Hungry Hill had been uprooted, stripped of all its metal work, and deposited on its side behind a tree next to the track – an even sorrier sight than its aforementioned geographical and numerical neighbour; and then travelling south, S6512 Crooksbury Hill was a very unusual non-standard pillar that sat in a clearing atop a steep wooded hill which had had some rough steps cut into it from the car park below; S6250 Kettlebury Hill took me round the houses as my planned route was unexpectedly closed off by road works; S1535 Hindhead was heavily armoured with plaques, a National Trust location sign, and a toposcope, all of which no doubt protected it from the attention of the many tourists who came to enjoy its spectacular view across the Devil’s Punchbowl; S6513 Rodborough Hill was concealed beneath head-high ferns and brambles, and contested Blackbushe’s status as my least favourite pillar; and S5653 Hydon’s Ball was a rustic pillar made out of bricks.  All of which had made for a very enjoyable adventure (or in Rodborough’s case, merely an adventure), and made me determined to have many more.
 
Four weeks later, I struck out towards Swindon.  Not exactly my favourite place to be (I’m from Reading; there’s a rivalry), but it’s a town which seemed to look after its trig points as I’d already found out on Towel Day the previous year – S6240 Toot Hill could easily have succumbed to the expansion of the town, but instead survived to become a feature in a suburban park.  Similarly, my first port of call on Trigspedition #3, S2421 Blunsdon, was also at risk of demolition for being on the edge of a construction site for a new housing estate.  However, not only was it left alone by the development, but the newly laid paths round the back of a playground actually made it a doddle to get to.  Fair play to you, Swindon – I now happily tell anyone who’ll listen that your biggest redeeming features are two big old blocks of concrete.  From Swindon I drove north to the edge of the Cotswolds, before turning back towards Oxford and home – a route which took me down lots of country lanes lined with dry stone walls, and I visited quaint little places with cute names like Filkins (S6316) and Tom Jolly’s (S6087).  I ultimately picked up no fewer than eleven pillars that day.  The relocated remains of S2410 Field Farm (Whelford), dumped outside the gates of an industrial site, were a rather uninspiring sight but made for a very easy roadside bag.  S1548 Wyck Beacon had an alarmingly wonky construction, with a very off-centre central tube.  S6758 Swinford Farm proved a challenge, as there were several dead ends which looked like they might have been the entry point to its reservoir-edge location, and finding the correct route to it then involved trudging along an extremely churned-up muddy track, followed by a scramble up a steep embankment.  Most of the pillars on this trip, though, were substantially easier to find, with little climbing required in such a flat part of the country, and several of them being situated a very short distance from the road.  Despite setting a new personal record for number of trigs bagged in a single day (for the third time in three trigspeditions), I actually completed this trip more quickly than the previous two. 
 
And then my luck changed.
 
A friend had posted a picture of her favourite view on social media.  There was a bench on the edge of a hilltop which dropped away sharply to reveal a particularly expansive view of the Great British countryside that I was becoming increasingly familiar with.  Naturally, my two thoughts on seeing this were “where is this?” and “is there a trigpoint there?”.  It took me a little while on Google Maps to pinpoint the location, knowing only that it was a steep hill, and that it wasn’t a million miles away from her home address.  Having eventually identified it though, I was overjoyed to discover that it was home to *two* trig pillars – an obvious one about a mile or so to the west (S2173 Giant’s Grave), and a hidden one in the dense woodland right behind the bench in her photo (S1500 Martinsell).  Hmmm… I bet she doesn’t know about the hidden one… so obviously I need to go there and reveal it!  Ill-fated Trigspedition #4 was drawn up.  After a less-than-promising start at 11395 Crooked Soley (hidden deep within a brambly hedge which proved impenetrable in September), what was supposed to be my second trig of the day ended in failure as I found myself misdirected to a field completely uninfested by trigpoints by a twisted signpost which had sent me down the wrong fork in a footpath.  Having wasted lots of time scouring empty hedgerows for a pillar that wasn’t there, I reluctantly admitted defeat and proceeded to my third location.  This one was thwarted by a serious accident which caused a lengthy tailback on the A-road that led past the turn-off to the pillar, and having sat in stationary traffic for the better part of an hour, I turned around and abandoned the majority of my plan for the day.  I found a place to pull in and consult my AA roadmap, and finding an alternative route straight to Martinsell Hill, set off on a lengthy, improvised diversion.  Ultimately, this would prove to be my least successful trigspedition to date, but on arrival at Martinsell’s car park, I could instantly see my friend’s attraction to this glorious hillside.  A bracing uphill walk led to the summit, from where the rays of the afternoon sun lit up tens of miles of woods and fields stretching out from the bottom of the hill.  Rounding the corner, I found the bench in her photo and took a quick five minutes’ rest before looking around for a way into the wood behind.  A faint trail through the overgrowth was indeed apparent, but following it involved a not inconsiderable amount of nettle-whacking.  Once inside the wood, progress was hampered by many low-hanging branches and a distinct lack of paths, but my perseverance paid off.  There behind a particularly large tree was a slightly fatter-than-average concrete pillar, wearing a thick coating of moss by way of camouflage.  Selfies duly taken, I then thought it might be fun to film my walk from the pillar to the edge of the wood, and my emergence onto the hillside revealing my location.  Which might have been a good plan if I could just remember exactly where I’d been!  A couple of wrong turns later, I eventually managed to thrash my way out into the open, all the while recording myself losing my way whilst getting battered by unyielding branches and scratched by the prickly undergrowth.  Martinsell was a great example of both the vegetation at its worst and the view at its best, both at the same site.  The long walk across the edge of the hill to the other trig point was a lot more pleasurable, still offering that view all the way along on one side, whilst the path weaved in and out of open sheepfields and fairytale woodlands, before Giant’s Grave came into view beside a small rise at the end of the hill (frustratingly on the wrong side of a barbed wire fence, but still close enough to count).  A drive-by bagging of S1911 Durley on the way home gave me a paltry total of just four pillars, but the Martinsell ones made the trip worthwhile.  I would eventually return to hoover up the ones I missed… but not yet, because the second Covid lockdown was about to be enforced, which took me (and pretty much everybody else) out of action until the run up to Christmas.  But with the thought of my 100th pillar looming – wherever it might be – I was keen to get out and about once more.
 
It was around now that I considered a trip just down the road to Denison Barracks in Hermitage, where the trigpointing community had discovered a trio of white cylindrical bollards which had three-legged “spiders” (like the brass mountings on top of each triangulation pillar) on top of them.  I wasn’t convinced these counted as trig pillars, though I did have a look at the location on Google Maps.  From the aerial view, there appeared to be half a dozen more further down the path.  I considered this to be mildly interesting, but not something I’d make a specific trip for, particularly since they were behind a chain link fence on military property.  Knowing what I know now, I should have gone there straightaway…  but I didn’t, so we’ll park this one for the time being. 
 
The country opened up again in December.  I didn’t think it should have, and lockdown was swiftly imposed again in January, but here was a brief window of opportunity for me to go out trig bagging once more, so I took it.  It’s not as if I met many people on my road trips – in fact, the solitude is very much an attraction.  This was a very grey, drizzly and muddy day, in stark contrast to my previous journeys, and wouldn’t have been particularly noteworthy if it weren’t for two things: bagging the otherwise unremarkable S6778 Great Tew (a very easy pillar in a roadside field beside a large layby) which I celebrated as my 100th with a short video clip; and taking a break from looking at rocks in fields by visiting the standing stones at Great Rollright – look, it’s a different sort of rocks in fields, okay – which had been used as a filming location in my beloved Doctor Who, way back in 1978.  I was greeted there by a tall and slender flower girl, who was more than happy to have her picture taken with me before I wandered around.  As she was made entirely of wicker, I figured my wife wouldn’t object.  The adjacent woods were full of wooden and wicker structures, too, including balls, arches, shelters and mazes, and the location has a very long layby in which to park, for occasions when the rest of the country isn’t pre-occupied with buying seasonal tat.  It was lovely (if a bit eerie) to have the place to myself, but slightly annoying that S1530 Rollright was a considerable distance up the road, with no parking opportunities whatsoever.  I literally abandoned my car on a straight bit of carriageway with my hazards on, just so I could jump the wall and trudge up the muddy field to bag it.  I ultimately arrived back home with another nine pillars under my belt, and an awful lot of Oxfordshire’s finest topsoil clinging to my boots and making a swamp of the footwell in my Ford Focus.  This would not be an isolated incident...

Comments

Popular posts from this blog

Chapter 12: Emily and The Duke Of Wellington

Chapter 8: Gigs and Trigs

Chapter 9: Highs and Lows