Chapter 11: Roads Less Travelled

Lesson Twelve:  No matter how briefly you stop, Sod’s Law dictates that if you park in front of a gate, someone will want to go through it whilst you’re there.

I had the bad luck to be stuck behind a tractor with a trailer full of livestock for the last couple of miles to the Brompton Ralph trig.  I didn’t especially want to overtake it (not that I could have, Somerset’s lanes being of barely sufficient width to accommodate a tractor in the first place), so I sat patiently behind it, cursing quietly every time it failed to turn off at a junction.  After a little while, quite a queue had built up behind me, and noticing this, the driver of the tractor kindly pulled in to let everyone pass.  Naturally, the place he chose to pull in was in front of the gate to the trig field – exactly the place I wanted to stop myself.  Hoping this wouldn’t set the tone for the day (and praying he wasn’t about to unload his four-legged cargo into that field), I overtook, turned off at the first available opportunity, and turned around to make a second pass at the field entrance.  Second time lucky, but with all the recent rain, my chosen parking spot was a couple of inches deep in thick mud.  I learned long ago to keep two wheels on the edge of the road to ensure my car didn’t get stuck!  I then christened my new walking stick by dropping it in the mud the moment I left my car.  Well this is going well…  Muddy patches aside, Brompton Ralph proved particularly scenic at sunrise.  The pillar was stood atop a mound next to a small pond in the middle of the field, just a short distance from the road.  It was as much a delight to bag as it was to put my name across adjoining rows in my spreadsheet later that evening!  S3748 Treborough Common was in a sheepfield up the road, beside a large brick-built water tank.  A passing dog walker stopped for a chat and suggested an early morning swim.  I declined!  S3924 Blagdon Hill took me down a lot of narrow, pitted, twisty single-track roads, and offered few parking spaces.  I pulled in beside the gate into the field containing the trig, figuring I’d only be five minutes and it would do no harm.  Was extremely embarrassed to find a small convoy of farm vehicles stretching down the lane on my return, wanting to enter the field for…  actually, I didn’t ask why.  The farmer in the leading Land Rover had guessed the reason for my being there, but he wasn’t bothered by my presence – merely by my obstructing his access.  I apologised profusely and left straightaway.  I think I got lucky – he had every right to be angry with me, but he wasn’t at all.  I don’t normally block gates; I did so at Brompton Ralph only because the pillar was in sight of it.  Even so, I made a mental note to be more strict with myself about parking in front of gateways in future. 

And then after the pillars on the farms came the ones in the wide open spaces.  S3916 Haddon Beacon sits in the middle of a gorsey heath, patrolled by dopey-looking ponies and, for the duration of my visit at least, a circling helicopter, which made bagging this trig feel very odd!  S3757 is the fifth pillar I’ve bagged called Beacon Hill, and the twelfth which has the word “beacon” somewhere in its name, not one of which has an actual beacon anywhere near it!  This is a hilltopper in The Quantocks which boasts a truly spectacular view all the way out and beyond the north coast of Somerset.  S3750 Black Hill is easier to reach but has less of a view, and from the same (rather stony and uneven) car park, a 2 mile walk down the Drove Road leads to S1526 Bagborough, with the road, the pillar, and the hill it sits on all looking exceptionally glorious in the golden light of the setting winter sun.  All of these trigs are served by National Trust car parks, and are very much tourist attractions – and it’s easy to understand why.  A day that started with narrow roads and minimal parking opportunities developed into a succession of bracing walks in some of the UK’s best-maintained and best-loved locations.  2024 was off to an excellent start.
 
Keen to keep the momentum going, I planned a trip slightly closer to home to hoover up a few pillars around the outskirts of Salisbury.  An ever-changing forecast ultimately cleared up on the second Saturday after my Somerset trip, and whilst the grey skies drained the warmth and colour out of the landscape, I was grateful that the rain held back for my fortieth (count ‘em) trigspedition, which involved a very significant amount of walking.  The wood beyond S2207 Grovely Hill (an easy and modest little field-dweller) contained the gnarled and knobbly Handsel Trees, four mighty twisted beeches which supposedly mark the resting places of four sisters who were brutally executed for witchcraft in the 1700s.  Wandering off-grid for a closer look at the nearest one, I found it was festooned with all manner of witchy tributes and random offerings.  S2204 Crouch Down crouched in a field a mile or so up a byway at the end of the Baverstock Lane, which may well be one of the worst kept roads I’ve ever driven down.  To be fair, large areas of Wiltshire had been stricken with floods in the days prior to my visit, and with the cold January temperatures, the badly cratered state of the road had been significantly worsened by the large expanses of standing water and icy sheets under which it lay.  I switched off my car stereo and changed down to first and second gears, proceeding with caution and concentration down this badly pitted narrow single-track lane.  And yes, of all the roads I ventured down on this day, it had to be this one where I encountered a whacking great tractor, which bore down on me from the opposite direction.
 
S2602 Pale Ash was a mildly obscured hedge-lurker which I imagine would be a complete nightmare in the summer with the vegetation at its fullest.  In January, however, it offered no challenges, but is noteworthy for being down the byway which leads past The Rotten Shed, a small and unassuming little building which features heavily in a DVD by cult rock band Cardiacs, of whom this trigpointer is a very big fan.  S2600 Trow Down sits outside a hilltop reservoir at the back end of a field beside The Ox Drove, a wide rutted byway which runs for over a kilometre to the nearest road, and which ultimately turns off to give the walker an impressive view across a deep valley.  The complete lack of human beings anywhere near this pillar made bagging it a startlingly peaceful and tranquil experience.  S2807 Damerham Knoll was a bugger for parking (the village of Rockbourne not being designed to accept strangers), but easier on the feet, though the gap in the hedge that allowed access to the pillar was frustratingly on the wrong side of a small but steep hill, which had to be climbed three times to bag the trig.  And with a kilometre walk up and down another rutted byway, a grey and freezing day’s trigging came to an end with S2607 Wick Down (Salisbury), squatting among the hefty foliage beside a narrow muddy footpath.  
 
I drew up a plan to return to the south west corner of Dorset in February, noting with dismay that the bands of rain which were sweeping across the country once again seemed invariably to coincide with the weekends.  However, the forecasts were still proving very unreliable more than a couple of days in advance, so I pencilled a couple of dates in my diary anyway, intending to make the decision to set out the day before.  Sunday 18^th was due to start with pelting rain, but slowly dry up as the morning progressed – if this proved true, the only time I’d be caught out by the weather would be whilst I drove to my first location.  In theory, I had a low risk of getting wet.  In practice…
 
It seemed by the end of this day that 2024 was upping its game with every trigspedition.  North Somerset?  Have some twisty and uneven single track roads.  Wiltshire?  Let’s add some icy floods into the mix.  South Dorset?  You ain’t seen nothin’ yet – come out and play!
 
As predicted, the heavy rain as I left home that morning had become a fine shower by the time I’d passed the mighty Stonehenge.  However, when the time came for me to pull off the A303, the challenging country lanes were swiftly shrouded in a thick mist, which forced me to drive with great caution.  As the roads became narrower, I turned into the track beneath my first hill of the day, and…  hey, where’d the road go?  I was faced with a wide expanse of brown water stretching across the fields either side, and as far as the eye could see in front of me.  To proceed would be foolish in the extreme, not least because I’d need to return down this lane, too, and I didn’t want to risk getting stranded on a road which could barely accommodate a small rescue vehicle, even when it wasn’t waist deep in water.  I backed away from what I’d hoped would be one of the more impressive trigs of the day, and reversed all the way back to the junction, defeated.  Please don’t let the first one set the tone today…
 
By the time I’d reached S5876 Higher Oborne, cowering at the back of a strategically pruned hedge beside another single-track road, the mist had lifted and the rain was a light drizzle, but with nowhere to pull in, this pillar was a lightning fast visit photographed mostly from my driver’s seat.  A successful bag, but as opening gambits go, it wasn’t exactly Malvern.  It wasn’t even Brompton Ralph.  S5715 East Farm was a second attempt, having failed to find it the previous August due to the height of the corn in the field it sat in.  In February, the crop had barely broken the topsoil, which meant the trig and everything else in the field was very clearly visible – and halfway across the muddy fallow strip the pillar sits in, I realised this meant I could be seen from the farmhouses either side.  I didn’t hang about here, either.  Another roadside pillar (S5046 Harvard) became my third swift bag in a row, before I proceeded down a treacherous network of cracked and pitted back roads characterised by increasingly disheartening signage.  Unsuitable for Goods Vehicles.  Potholes.  Temporary Road Surface.  All of these warnings appeared long after they were actually necessary, and I groaned with each one.  Road Liable To Flooding…  yep, there beyond the t-junction is a deep and fast flowing torrent where the road should have been.  Fortunately, said junction led somewhere else, so I made a diversion down yet another treacherous country lane.  And once again, I found myself within a few hundred metres of the next pillar on my list when I saw a huge stretch of water completely obscuring the road and its verges as far as the eye could see.  Not wanting to guess where the track went (which could easily see me permanently bogged down in a deep-but-clearly-inadequate drainage ditch if I got it wrong), I backed away from a second trig that morning.
 
On the plus side, the weather was clearing up now, and there were occasional patches of blue in the heavy grey clouds.  The rain from the sky was no longer a problem, but the rain on the ground was another matter.  I re-routed again, and found myself at the edge of Gerrards Hill, home to a small copse, a large flock of sheep, and trigpoint S5890.  Half a mile of muddy, steep-sided bridleway ended in a stile into a sheepfield on the side of a steep ridge, which gave me my first proper views of the day.  It doesn’t really feel like a legitimate bag if I haven’t wheezed and puffed my way to the top of a hill!  Not for the first time, I had a rest at the summit and took in the sight of vast acres of undulating countryside, all laid out beneath me, and I remembered why I do this ridiculous hobby.
 
Yet more narrow and badly-maintained back roads had to be negotiated from here, with the steep-sided single-track lane out of Stoke Abbas providing me with a new challenge.  With barely enough width for me to drive up it, turning around was out of the question, so when I was faced with a rockfall from the right-hand embankment, I had no choice but to pull up and get my hands filthy clearing the road of large blocks of displaced clay.  Small torrents of dust and gravel fell from the edge as I worked, so I was keen to shift this obstruction swiftly – another fall looked like it might happen at any time.  I prayed I wouldn’t find another blockage further up the track… fortunately, no more obstacles presented themselves.
 
Having finally overcome all my z-road woes, I found the tone for the rest of the day had now been set, as I made my way from hilltop to hilltop.  S1507 Pilsdon was on a National Trust managed site, with steps cut into the path up the side of the slope giving easy access to the wide grassy plateau at the top.  A small roadside car park enjoyed a wonderful view of the valley below, all the way to the sea on the horizon.  There are worse places to have lunch.  Another National Trust site, S3723 Lamberts Hill, was more of a park than a hill, and was well-used by the local dog-walkers.  S3746 Coppet Hill (Dorset) was steep and muddy, and inaccurately named as the pillar was actually on the peak beyond Coppet Hill itself.  And then came the highlight of the day, S3752 Golden Cap, a tourist attraction on the south coast served by another National Trust car park.  With its wide and well-kept gravel tracks leading their way round the edge of an imposing woodland, the route to the trig was a complete joy to walk.  Signposts showed the way to the hill on the edge of the coastline, and a particularly squelchy field gave way to another set of steps to the top, from which a superb view of the cliffs can be had, even on a cloudy day like this.  I leaned on the fence and gazed out to sea for several minutes, just marvelling at the sheer beauty of it all.  Every crap road and impassable flood, the mist, the deep and slippery mud, and the falling rocks…  suddenly they were all worth it.
 
S5962 Colmers Hill was on top of a small but particularly steep hill beside the village of Symondsbury, which instantly became one of my favourite places, because every resident I passed said hello.  Folk aren’t that friendly back home in Reading.  The hill itself is a small challenge the further up you get, because the last few metres are steep enough for vertigo to rear its ugly head.  I remembered Cley Hill, and told vertigo to fuck off.  I had a few other pillars down the A35 that I wanted to squeeze in, but I was ultimately thwarted by the hours of daylight that February allowed me.  Perhaps a summer trip would have given me more trigs (and fewer rain-related issues), but there are worse places to watch the sunset than the top of S5986 North Hill (Dorset), so I left happy (even though that hill gave me the muddiest descent yet – the footpath was more of a flowing stream, even at the end of the day, with thick mud that threatened to suck the boots off my feet…  much fun in the fading light!).  I will return.  Unbagged trigs or no, this part of the world is too beautiful to stay away from.
 
The constant and unpredictable rain continued to be a theme as winter turned to spring, so I planned out a roadtrip on the offchance of a last minute break in the unrelentingly dismal forecasts.  In early March, the downpours abated briefly, and I found a further dozen trigs in an enjoyably hassle-free (if unremarkable) trip to Warwickshire.  My inner spreadsheet geek was happy to bag 10975 Ashorne Park in a tree-speckled green behind a college, as FB numbers in the ten thousands are generally all up in Scotland, and this was the first one I’d found.  I was grateful for the wide, smooth, and fast roads in this part of the world, which were a distinct improvement on the derelict trails that passed for roads in the west country, though I was a tad dismayed to see so many roadworks and temporary traffic lights all over the region.  Ashorne was in a particular state of chaos with a set of three-way lights all stuck on red, and with the village’s lack of parking, it was difficult to tell whether the vehicles along the roadside were queuing up in vain or had been parked or abandoned!  More roadworks caused chaotic congestion in Radford Semele, at the top of a remarkably busy dead end road that culminated in the swampy footpath that led across a couple of field edges to S4797 Crown Hill, sitting underneath a tree and enjoying expansive views of crop fields in most directions.
 
Roadworks notwithstanding, a succession of roadsiders and footpath-lurkers made this trip one of the easiest I’d had in a while, and I’d successfully worked my way through all twelve pillars by the early afternoon.  Knowing I’d be driving back via Oxford, I added an impromptu detour to S7198 Horton to my itinerary – one of a handful of trigs I’d previously attempted but failed to bag, and had kept in the back of my mind should I find myself revisiting the area. 
 
April’s famed showers were positively light and sporadic after the unending torrential downpours of February and March.  Again, a dry weekend forecast snuck up on me without warning, so I hurriedly compiled a route from trig-heavy Chelmsford all the way up the A12 to Manningtree.  Essex is not a county I know very well, despite being just the other side of the M25, and I was surprised to find just how flat it all was.  On the plus side, there are a lot of easy roadside hedge-hiders to be found, which more than justified the mileage.  Sadly, so few of them were interesting or noteworthy, with no really special views to be enjoyed on the entire trip, and few interesting stories to be told.  I bagged myself another seventeen pillars that day, from a shortlist of eighteen - in Colchester I was rather put out to find a track that was clearly marked as a footpath on the OS map on Streetmaps, and signposted as one on the most recent picture on Google Streetview, had been gated off with a big sign saying Keep Out offering no argument.  Rule One had to be applied for the first time in 2024. 
 
Having made excellent progress in the first four months of the 2024, I took my foot off the pedal for a while.  There was a cluster of gigs to be attended in May; some landmark birthday celebrations and a December getaway to be planned; and the increasing demands of my work needed to take a front seat.  I did receive a small concrete reward on this last count, though, as I unexpectedly passed S4802 Heathcote Farm on my way to visit a customer.  I knew this pillar had a roadside location close to their premises, but thought I was too late to bag it when it was removed during the road-widening works that began in in 2023.  Said roadworks had been completed by the time of my trip in mid-June, however, and I was delighted to see the trig had been re-positioned beside the exit to a nearby roundabout.  A series of selfies in a suit swiftly followed, and with the weather having become a lot brighter over the last couple of weeks, I started thinking about trigspeditions once again…