Chapter 7: Cack-Handed Camera
Around this time, a Dorset-based YouTuber called Rufus Gazelle appeared in the Facebook group, having discovered trigpointing and gone out to film himself looking for pillars. He was a breath of fresh air, being enthusiastic and relatable, and doing something slightly different with the hobby. His video adventures bore a lot in common with my own experiences – sometimes he’d find his local pillars easily, and sometimes he’d come a cropper. I enjoyed watching his output hugely, and inspired, turned my attention to Dorset.
Dorset is a very picturesque county, so I wanted to follow in Rufus’s footsteps. I drew up a plan which took in, among others, S2530 Fern Down Common – a gorse-dweller in the middle of a public common north of Bournemouth, which I researched to the nth degree, keen to make easier work of it than he had, for his video found him taken by surprise after the pillar jumped out on him from behind, after a considerable amount of wandering about in the spiky undergrowth. I mapped out the trails through the park explicitly, so I could be straight in and out within moments. I would conduct this visit with military precision. Or so I thought.
Having parked on Ringwood Road near the south entrance to the common, I duly followed the path north west, past the Great Barrow on my left, and not deviating from the dusty track until it forked to the left below the power lines. So far, so good. Turn right after the pylon, go straight at the right turn, then climb the bank on the left where a small trail leaves the path as it turns right. OK, I think I’m still in the right place. Cross the track and find the pillar in the gorse… wait, what ‘s going on here? I had thoroughly examined the trails and the terrain and the landmarks on the 3D map on Google; I had used the OS maps on Streetmaps and the user’s map from Trigpointing UK to determine exactly where the pillar was; and I had watched Rufus’s video multiple times, slowly, to see the area for myself, as it appeared only a few weeks ago. So how the Hell am I lost? Why don’t these trails match up with anything I’ve seen? A local dog walker passed by, stopped for a quick chat as Harley The Dog went for a sniff in the bushes, and – unprompted – mentioned that there was a trig pillar on this very hill, though she wasn’t sure where. So I’m in the right place, but the paths aren’t making sense! It was all so clear on the maps and the video and the aerial view. I fell back on two things: I knew from the video that the pillar was somewhere in a large clump of gorse, but was approachable on foot without too much bramble-whacking; and failing that, there was that reliable old standby of If In Doubt, Keep Going Up. That rule served me well at Rogate and Flexham Park, after all. I left the path and clambered across some extremely uneven rocky and heather-strewn terrain, up to a clearing where I saw… a lovely view and some interesting flora, but no pillar. I poked around the various clumps and bushes, but to no avail, and as the ground started to drop away from me, I turned back. I ventured the other way, trying desperately to keep my balance on the very uneven surface. I was faced with a wall of gorse – OK, no way through there… wait, what’s in the corner there? A small gap leading around the gorse. Worth investigating… Yep, there’s a hidden path through the spiky bushes, and I was very glad to be wearing my battledress here, sweltering and dripping with sweat as I was due to the midday sun and the exertions of the search. I was tripping over it as I negotiated logs and large rocks and heather bushes, and a fair few scratches were still getting through around my wrists and ankles, but I was so grateful for the protection of this seemingly ridiculous garment, as I followed the hidden trail round a corner and… nope, that just takes me back down to the main path the other side. Still no pillar, although this bush does look familiar… I remembered Rufus’s video again. It’s behind me, isn’t it? Got you, you lil’ bugger! I often try to include navigational advice in my logs on the Trigpointing site to aid future visitors with the trickier finds, but I was at a loss to describe any sort of landmarks here, or give any sort of meaningful directions. I am convinced that the best advice for finding the Fern Down Common trig is the previously noted saying from my late grandmother. She used to feed a friendly robin redbreast that came all the way up to her kitchen door and would happily peck away at the scraps right by her feet, completely unfazed by her proximity. I remember her whenever I see a robin in my garden, or when I’m out and about. I saw one earlier that day, actually, fluttering about the hedgerows beside the path to S2568 Pistle Hill. It seemed to follow me for quite a distance, chirping away in the sunlight, and I’m sure if I’d stopped to listen, I’d have heard it singing my grandmother’s little ditty: “If at first you don’t succeed, try, try, try again.”
S2705 Ashley Heath filled a hole in my numbering and gave me a run of five. Hidden up a concealed path in a dense wood, it’s not a pillar you would stumble across if you weren’t looking for it. A previous visitor had left a can of Red Bull and a pair of novelty monster-feet slippers on top of it. Nope, me neither. I left them in place when taking my selfies. (Two years later, I was amused to learn they were still there.) S2567 Badbury Rings is on the rampart of a hillfort which is something of a tourist spot. The centre of the hillfort contains both a wood and a toposcope, pointing out all the places that you can’t see because of the trees. S5906 Spettisbury Ring is also on the outer wall of a hillfort, a short distance away from a disused railway station, which has been converted into an attraction (albeit a poorly-maintained one). And S2590 Pentridge Hill is on the edge of a wood with a commanding view across the Dorset countryside – some small exertion is required to reach it, but is amply rewarded by the beauty of the location. And Pentridge Hill, my final stop on that particular day, brought me up to a tantalising 299 trig pillars. Which means the next one will warrant the now-traditional centenary video, and wouldn’t it be nice if it was something a little less random this time?
Near the beginning of all this, I mentioned my first ever run of “consecutrigs”, running from S5724 Lowbury Hill (a couple of miles up The Ridgeway from The Bell at Aldworth, an excellent public house famed for its hot crusty rolls) through to S5731 White Hill (behind a concealed quarry off a bridleway in South Stoke). This run of eight is bookended by a pillar in an extremely remote patch of Scotland, and another which has long since been destroyed. Well, almost. In fact there are nine trigs between those two, and the one I was missing was S5723 Hagbourne Hill. West Hagbourne is not a million miles away from the A34 and the grotty industrial carbuncle that is Didcot, and is very much on my doorstep. Why was I missing it? Because it’s behind a farmhouse. Technically, it’s on the edge of a field, but it’s close enough to the property that it feels like it’s in the landowner’s back garden, and is certainly within clear view of the back of the house. In short, paying it a visit requires knocking on a door – something which up to now I have avoided doing. But on October 7th, I found myself driving home down the A34 after a visit to the dentist, and I thought perhaps I should try and turn an unpleasant trip into a rewarding one. The logs on Trigpointing UK had all testified to the kind and amenable nature of the lady of the house, and I’m pleased to report that they speak truly. Slightly nervously knocking on her door, wondering how I was going to explain myself, I was instantly put at ease as she explained she often had visitors calling about the pillar, but she never minded them as long as they asked her first, and she thanked me for doing so. A very lovely lady indeed, and thanks to her I now have a video on my phone in which I am battling a strong wind in an exposed place, trying to explain the twin numerical significances of this trig (that it completes a run of nine, and that it’s my 300th bag) all the while dribbling copiously into my beard from swollen lips because the dental anaesthetic had yet to wear off. This is why I leave the YouTubing to the likes of Rufus Gazelle.
Shall we go back to Dorset, then?
Lesson Ten: Always check your pockets when you leave the car.
S2227 Little Hill (Shaftesbury) has such an unassuming name. Surely I can’t get into difficulty on a little hill? With a name sounding like it comes from a children’s book, this one must surely be simplicity itself to bag, right? So many of these pillars are inaccurately named, you know. Hill Top is in a particularly flat patch of the New Forest. Marsh Farm in Luton is neither on a farm nor a marsh (unlikely as it sounds, it’s in an alley behind a housing estate). Tower View is a forest dweller that isn’t near a tower and doesn’t offer a view. And Little Hill is atop a near-vertical roadside embankment, some five or six metres up, and a particularly grotty and unpleasant one at that. There’s a gated track right under it in which I parked my car. Usually wooded, some recent deforestation left me looking up at a profusion of tree stumps all along the embankment, which gave the pillar a visibility it was unaccustomed to, and the dirty-looking concrete lump just sat there, taunting me from on high from behind a scruffy barbed wire fence. Too steep and exposed to tackle directly from the busy main road, there had to be another way to reach it, so I hopped the gate and explored. Sure enough, there was a stile in the hedge beside the track which led into a compound that served as both a reservoir and a mast enclosure. A second stile a few metres away took me into a fenced off area, in which I could walk around the huts and masts, and after a bit of poking about, I found a trail which led all the way round behind the compound, back towards the road and only slightly below the crest of the embankment. I knew this would be doable! Except the trail stopped dead about twenty metres or so before the pillar, meaning access involved crashing through some dense overhanging branches from one of the few trees that remained, and scrambling up the loose earth to the top of the overgrown surface of the embankment – a particularly grubby and muddy proposition, not helped by the lack of solid places to plant my feet. However, I persevered and arrived beside the trig, which was in a good condition despite its filthy state. I had a direct view straight down to the roof of my little Ford Focus, and I could see the traffic thundering by below me. OK, enough of that, let’s find a comfortable position to take my selfies, and then get out of this rather horrible little spot, for I’ve certainly no wish to remain nor return here. And that was the point I realised I’d left my phone charging in the car.
S2448 Burnbake is a very easy hedge dweller if you approach it from the north-eastern corner of the field to the east, walk all the way down the side and bottom field edges, and then turn back north towards the pillar. Rufus hadn’t, and made a bit of a pig’s ear of it. I left feeling smug! S6041 Melbury Hill crowns a particularly large and steep hill which takes a fair amount of stamina to climb. However, the upshot is that it enjoys amazing 360° views, and is another pillar where I was happy to rest and take in the scenery for half an hour – a very beautiful place to be. The pillar itself has been distinctively modified, as a toposcope has been mounted on top of it, sat in a hefty concrete ring. S6023 Duncliffe Hill also requires a substantial climb, but the wooded ridge it inhabits, whilst beautiful of itself, offers no view at all. S2170 Yarnbury Castle and S1504 Beacon Hill (Bulford) both taunt the long distance driver by being visible from the A303 should you look north. The former is on a very grassy hillfort; the latter on a chalky hillside below a couple of phone masts. Both are baggable from the A303 itself: the Yarnbury pillar is reachable from a stony bridleway that adjoins the main road; the Bulford one is very close to a layby. I didn’t have either on my itinerary for this day, but it seemed silly not to hoover them up on my return home.
311 pillars bagged now, and having taken all my remaining Fridays on leave, the roadtrips came thick and fast…
…down to Worthing to visit the windmill beside S4110 Halnaker Hill and the folly behind S4109 Nore Folly (both locations disappointingly defaced by local graffiti artists), before driving up the slippery hillside-hugging single track road to S1519 Bignor Beacon…
…up to the Cotswolds to enjoy lunch from the edge of S5105 Dovers Hill before diving into the head-height nettles that engulf S5505 Charingworth, and trudging up the sheepfields to the drystone-encased S4374 Meon Hill (completing an otherwise Bournemouth-based run of six)…
…across to Luton just seven days later for the golden early morning view at S4550 Beacon Hill (Ivinghoe), the beautiful undulating hilltop of S4552 Castle Mound (Totternhoe), and the fabulous pitted scenery around S7162 Deacon Hill (Pegsdon)…
…the miles added up, and the spreadsheet got larger and larger, and I found myself with a lot of photos on my phone that I really ought to do something with. I mean, yes, I uploaded the best pics of the pillars to Trigpointing UK, and I shared my favourite selfies and landscape pics with the Facebook group and my own news feed, but there’s other things I can do with them, too. Christmas is coming, and I gifted myself a bespoke Trig Point Addicted calendar for 2023, cherry-picking my favourite photos for each month. Very easily done on Bonusprint’s website, who turned them into a high quality product at a reasonable price. I may have threatened making additional copies as presents to friends and family who didn’t know what they wanted for Christmas. Surprisingly, that swiftly stopped being a problem that year. I compiled a second calendar the next year for 2024.
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