Chapter 12: Emily and The Duke Of Wellington

August 2024.  Whilst I was in Burton-on-Trent last year, a missing-presumed-destroyed pillar had been discovered by the edge of a field in Nuneaton, and looking at the area online, it appeared there were a couple of easy bags very close to it, so I made a mental note to put the area on my list for a potential trigspedition.  After a mostly concrete-free summer, I thought a wander round this region would ease me gently back into the rockbothering habit again, so I started compiling a set of directions.  I’m always keen to be away from Reading when the Festival is happening, so the Bank Holiday saw me set off on my first roadtrip in four months. 

 

S4299 Nuneaton Fields was easily found by a kissing gate on a PROW that bisected a large cornfield.  It is without doubt the coolest looking pillar I’ve seen, for not only is it (literally) laid back, but at the time of my visit it was wearing a natty pair of sunglasses.  With its head resting on a pillow of wooden blocks, there was a sizeable gap between its lower face and the ground, which enabled me to slide my phone underneath and get a snap of the flush bracket which, in accordance with Sod’s Law, was facing downwards.  And also in accordance with Sod’s Law, I was in this undignified position - on all fours with my arse in the air, grovelling about in the dirt - when the farmer trundled past in his tractor and gave me a cheery wave.  Oh, I’ve missed this stupid hobby.  His casual acceptance of my presence in his field leads me to assume I’m not the first eccentric trig bagger he’s encountered in the nine months since this pillar’s whereabouts became widely known.  I can only hope my predecessors presented him with a less ridiculous profile than I did. 

 

11802 Croft was a must-have.  For a start, its bracket number is one higher than the Castle Donington pillar’s, which puts it at the extreme end of my spreadsheet and gives me my first five-digit consecutive pair.  But numbers alone do not a desirable trigpoint make.  The Croft pillar sits atop a small but steep hill overlooking a large and extremely deep quarry right in the middle of a village.  In fact, this trig offers an expansive and impressive view for many miles in nearly all directions, but it’s the whacking great hole in the ground that draws the eye.  The view, plus the relative ease with which the hill can be accessed, attracted a continuous stream of walkers, which made me inventive with the angles when I was taking my usual pics and selfies – you wouldn’t know it if you saw them, but there is somebody either behind the pillar or behind my head in most of the photos I took up there.  The pillar itself has been somewhat over-enthusiastically painted, its all-encompassing white overcoat rendering the number on the bracket a lot less distinct than usual.  Regardless, it’s a gleaming beacon overlooking an awe-inspiring man-made chasm in an otherwise beautiful location, and I happily spent some time just sitting on the rocks beside the trig taking the whole scene in.  Certainly this trig was a vast improvement on S2380 Upton, which I’d visited shortly beforehand.  Being hidden at the back of a large hollow hedgerow beside an obscure single-track road, you’d think this one wouldn’t get any visitors at all.  And yet when I came to update the Trigpointing UK website that evening, not only did I notice it has a frequent and regular visitor most days, but another trigpointer had come along to keep it company within an hour of my leaving.  Evidently you don’t need to be beautiful and approachable to have admirers.

 

And then came the Harringtons.  Trig pillars weren’t just used by the Ordnance Survey for mapping.  They were also sometimes used in large scale construction projects (some of the last pillars ever built were for the digging of the Channel Tunnel in the mid 80s), and occasionally some were used by the military.  Forty-odd pillars were constructed in the late 50s for Project Emily, a short-lived initiative to deploy American ballistic missiles in the UK.  Much of the infrastructure for this project was then dismantled in the mid 60s, and most of the Project Emily trig pillars were decommissioned and junked at the same time, but there are a handful still extant (though mostly in various states of disrepair).  RAF Harrington is now basically three concrete foundations where an airbase used to stand, and the pits, cellars and water tanks that remain are filled with scrap metal, old tyres, and various flavours of concrete and masonry.  It’s a bleak and desolate place, hidden behind an oatfield beside a wide concrete bridleway in north Sheepshitshire, and it’s an eerily fascinating location to explore, especially if you’ve seen the old black and white photos of the place in its prime.  Two Project Emily pillars were built here, and both were assigned numbered brackets by the OS, although the military then ground the OS letters off them as these were technically not OS trigs.  There is no record of the number assigned to S???? Harrington South, so the removal of the bracket from that pillar is extremely unhelpful, especially if you’re a spreadsheet-obsessed concrete-addict.  The remains of this pillar are easily found in the pit at the south-eastern end of the southern launch site, and there’s just enough space between the pillar and the pit wall to see the whacking great gouge where the bracket used to be.  Having found Harrington South easily enough, I thought its twin brother would be equally simple to locate – after all, I had looked up its exact location on Trigpointing UK before setting out.  I was delighted to find that a footpath had been trampled down behind the three foundations, but before I could follow it, a figure emerged from the bushes at the far end.  The last thing I expected to see here was another human being – I mean, what sort of madman would venture into a place like this?  I guessed the silver-haired chap mooching about before me in jeans and Uriah Heep t-shirt probably wasn’t about to ask me to leave, so I said hello and had a short chat.  He seemed to be a military enthusiast, having a break from a run to look around the site.  I told him I was looking for a lump of concrete.  We agreed I was definitely in the right place!  Pleasantries exchanged, I returned to the path and followed it round to the north of the central launchpad, looking out for the concrete water tank which was supposed to be a few dozen metres north west of it.  I saw lots of overgrown bushes and abandoned farm machinery, plenty of concrete debris, and then a high stack of hay bales… but no water tank.  And then my heart slowly sank as I realised it had to be somewhere in the bushes, off the beaten track, among a densely-packed crop of nettles, thistles and brambles which brought back memories of West Knoyle the previous summer.  And idiot me had left my battledress at home.  With a resigned sigh, I began to whack and thrash my way through the thorns and the stingers to the edge of the field, where I believed the tank ought to be.  To my immense relief, when I got close to the edge, I could see the top of the tank wall hiding behind a couple of bushes, well concealed among the chest-high nettles, so I struck out towards it.  I could just make out the outline of S9864 Harrington North behind the branches and brambles, but from this angle, I couldn’t get close enough to get a decent photo… but it looked like the south wall facing the oatfield was relatively free of plantlife, so I continued to stamp and hack my way over the increasingly uneven ground, around the edges of the concrete tank.  And eventually, there it was, lying innocently among the tall grass and weeds that had covered the bottom of the tank.  Prodding the concrete with my walking stick seemed to confirm that it was solid and unmoving enough for a seventeen stone idiot to climb in and get a selfie with the recumbent pillar in relative safety.  I wanted a bracket shot, especially as this was a rare S9000s pillar (most numbers in this range are way up north), but once again in accordance with Sod’s Law, the bracket was facing downwards, and this time there was no gap.  (A previous and far more determined trigpointer than me had already confirmed that it’s still attached, though.)  Trig duly bagged, I returned to the bridleway, where Uriah Heep Guy had resumed his run.  “You found it, then?”  Yep.  And you know what?  I actually really enjoyed getting it, too.  I’m starting to think I’m beyond help.

 

Back in 2019, I had a wander along the edge of the A33, opposite the monument to the Duke Of Wellington, searching in vain for a breach in the infuriatingly sturdy wire deer-fence that stood between the road and the wood.  S5992 Heckfield Heath is frustratingly close to the road, but on the wrong side of the fence and not really close enough to count as a bag from the verge.  Being very local to me, my inability to bag this pillar had grated for years, and whenever I drove past it, I’d ask my missus to look out the window and just check whether the fence had fallen down at all.  It became a running gag.  It was always up, of course, and I had to accept it probably always would be.  And then 2024 came along, and towards the end of the summer there was a spate of successful bags logged on the Trigpointing UK website, and I am very much indebted to the folk who uploaded them.  Inspired by the pillar’s recent visitors and curious about its sudden accessibility, I pulled into the layby opposite the monument and had another close-up look, and yes, hidden behind the foliage was a section which had collapsed to lower than crotch height.  Hidden by the bushes and the ferns, I was swiftly in and out again, scarcely believing my luck, and beaming now that I’d bagged nine of the ten pillars closest to my home.  (The tenth requires knocking on the door of a lady who, I’m told, generally doesn’t grant permission, so that one will wait a little longer…)

 

Mention of Wellington reminds me that I had a second reason to venture out that day.  I was rather disappointed when my walking boots fell apart as I took them off when I returned from Harrington.  I’d had them less than three years, and frankly I expected they’d do me for a lot longer.  Still, I guess I should be grateful that they waited until the end of the day to fall apart, unlike their predecessors.  As a rule, I absolutely loathe shopping for footwear, so bagging the Heckfield pillar turned a hated trip into a gleeful one.

 

With plenty of new photos on my hard drive, I turned my attention to compiling a third bespoke calendar for 2025, with the sunrise at Brompton Ralph, the view from white-painted Croft, the verdant forest at Heckfield, and the sunset at Bagborough all getting a month to themselves. 

 

The remainder of 2024 was all quiet on the trigpointing front, apart from three drive-by baggings that November.  My cousin’s sudden passing meant a trip to North Devon for her funeral, and with that being a lengthy round trip, I had a quick look at the map for blue triangles along the way.  November’s short hours of daylight proved more limiting than I’d have liked, but I was still able to attack some brambles to add two of the county’s notorious hedge-dwellers to my list, and call in at S5351 Beaples Hill on my way back down the A361.  There had been many reports of sleet and snow in the national news that week, but living in sunny Berkshire, I’d seen none of it for myself.  And indeed my cousin’s hometown of Bideford was enjoying a bright and beautiful spot of sunshine that afternoon, which bathed the whole area in a glorious golden glow.  But my journey up that morning saw a dramatic change in the weather about 15km before Tiverton, which lasted all the way to South Molton.  A sunny day quickly became a blizzard, with no warning whatsoever.  Suddenly the ground was covered in the cold white stuff, and it had settled enough to obscure all the roadsigns along the route.  It was a startling contrast, and even though the snow flurry had abated by the time I made the return journey, I still endured a cold and wet trig bag involving trudging slowly through snow-covered dead bracken which was almost waist-height in places – not pleasant.  However, it was worth it for the photos I took at that location, which were beautifully wintry, and I was certain that Beaples Hill at sunset would be a shoo-in for December should I get round to compiling a fourth trigpoint calendar for 2026…

 

…and then January 2025 came along to rob me of that certainty.