Chapter 13: You Got It (The White Stuff)

Barbados doesn’t have any trigpoints, so our long-anticipated Christmas holiday passed without any trigpointing activity, much to my wife’s relief!  The sweltering thirty-one degrees heat had made for an unusual Christmas Day, and provided a dramatic contrast with my next trigspedition less than three weeks later, which managed to coincide with the coldest day of the chilliest January for several years.  At no point that day did the temperature gauge in my trusty little Ford Focus register a number above zero.  There are pros and cons to trigpointing in the cold.  The obvious drawback is the amount of ice which covered some of the roads, particularly the narrow twisty country lanes that featured very heavily in that afternoon’s itinerary.  The challenging driving conditions were then worsened by large patches of fog which varied in intensity from prettily hazy to dense and opaque.  On the plus side, though, slippery roads with impenetrable visibility meant normal, sensible people stayed well away from narrow twisty country lanes; almost the whole stretch between Redditch and Droitwich Spa had become my own exclusive playground!  The frost had also hardened some very muddy patches of ground, and ensured I encountered very little livestock, too – and all the bushes and hedges that are the bane of every trigpointer were bare and unobstructive.  There’s a lot to be said for trigging in a cold snap, so long as you’re not actually climbing any mountains.

Lickey Hill is a popular dog-walking park, in which S3147 is barely noticeable, playing second fiddle to a far more ornate and popular bit of hill furniture.  The pillar hides away in the shadows, beside a wooded footpath a short distance off the exposed summit of the hill, where a large free car park serves possibly the most extravagantly presented toposcope in the UK.  The toposcope proudly boasts of very many far off places which might be seen from its elevated spot in the middle of a small brick fort, which is complete with arrow slits, arches, a central staircase, two turrets containing curved benches, and two small wings, all fashioned from rustic stone and topped with picture-book crenellated battlements.  It’s a marvellous little folly, although on this occasion the promised views from the toposcope sadly failed to materialise through the winter fog.  I’m willing to bet in warmer weather it attracts the attention of every child in the area.  Meanwhile, all the trigpoint has attracted is the attention of a local graffiti artist, more’s the pity.

 

The frosty ground and the bleached out skies certainly made for some attractive photos, though – I found it very difficult to take a bad picture in these conditions, either here, or at S4020 Cofton Common, or S2333 Hob Hill, or S3836 Hill Barn (Grafton Flyford) – all ordinary run-of-the-mill hilltoppers rendered spectacular by the pale skies and the wintry weather.

 

Some respite was had when the weather cleared up at Frankley Beeches, a small roadside copse of beech trees opposite a large layby, from where a signposted kissing gate bade welcome to the public.  The golden sunlight on the tree trunks was scenic enough, but then seeing S2330 at the edge of the copse, framed beneath an archway of branches, was an unexpected visual delight – even moreso for the colourful wreaths and tributes that adorned the pillar, which doubles up as a memorial and carries two small oval plaques on its far side.

 

Any hopes that the break in the fog was permanent, though, were dashed on the approach to Feckenham, where what began as a light mist swiftly developed into thick pea soup by the time I’d parked up.  The muddy footpath that ran around a large house and up the side of a steep hill was easy enough to follow, with a series of wooden steps installed to aid the ascent.  But once through the gate at the top, what should have been a wide open field with a picturesque view was reduced to a clingy, all enveloping white blanket, offering no visibility beyond a couple of dozen metres.  The lack of vision was almost as startling as the lack of sound – if there were any birds chirping or people walking in the area, the fog had swallowed up all trace of their noises.  It was eerily silent as I stood beside S3845 Hill Top, alone with the pillar in what looked like the interior of a large ping pong ball, with only a faint pale blur indicating the position of the sun amidst a miasma of shades of grey.  As I looked out towards what should have been an impressive hilltop view, I just saw a short stretch of frost-covered grass getting swallowed up by the haze, and I’ve never felt so alienated.  It certainly made for a distinctive set of selfies – enough for a calendar full of Decembers.

 

February gave me a trip down to Brighton in the name of loud punk rock, which was as good an excuse as any to investigate a few more blue triangles on my map.  S3978 Blackcap looked like it would be a joy to do, so I planned out the route from there to Brighton… and then a Trigpointing UK user posted about their hassle-free visits to a couple of pillars in Goodwood, not a million miles south of the village of Cocking, where the South Downs Way leads to both S1517 Linch Ball and S4055 Heyshott Down.  None of these four are anywhere near Brighton, but the A272 makes for a very scenic drive, and directly connects them with the A23 that then leads to my ultimate destination, so why not? 

 

Linch Ball certainly gave my legs a bit of a workout, as the lengthy uphill hike to the trig field took me through the rolling hills, past woods and sheepfields, and ultimately towards a pinnacle that offered the obligatory far-reaching views across the verdant West Sussex countryside.  This part of the world never fails to impress me.  The wide open emptiness, the bleating of the ewes relaxing in the sun and munching contentedly on the grass… the cheerful birdsong, the feel of the gentle breeze…  and then, my blissful reverie suddenly shattered by cries of “Look Mum, that sheep’s doing a pee!” as a family of walkers hoves into view.  Declining to embarrass the poor urinating ovine any further, I cast my gaze towards the horizon instead – the sight of the rough chalky path disappearing toward the cloudy horizon providing, to my mind, a far more wholesome view – and I contemplated whether I was missing out on an important life experience by not having kids.  “That one’s doing a poo!”  I swiftly concluded I wasn’t.

 

Heyshott Down was in  the opposite direction from Linch Ball down the same byway. Another lengthy uphill trudge, though, through a couple of very muddy puddles that spanned the entire path. My new boots came off a little worse for wear... though a far messier trek was yet to come…

 

Before that, though, was S4044 Trundle Hill, in the centre of a hillfort overlooking Goodwood Racecourse – a much smaller hill than the others, but one which offered very impressive sights in all directions, with the bird’s eye view of the race track itself stealing the show.  An older couple had followed me down the path to the trig, and I overheard the husband explaining to his disinterested missus how the pillars were navigational beacons for passing spaceships, and were used to help them land on Earth.  Fortunately, this one didn’t seem to be working, so we all managed to avoid being abducted. 

 

Between them, Linch Ball and Heyshott Down had eaten up most of the afternoon, so by the time I’d reached Brighton, the sun was hanging low in the sky.  Between them, Linch Ball and Heyshott Down had given me aching legs and blistered feet – have I mentioned I am unfit? – so by the time I’d reached Brighton, I was already feeling uncomfortably pained, not to mention tired and sweaty.  I debated with myself whether I had both the time and the energy to attempt Blackcap before the sun went down, and concluded that the only sensible thing to do was to give Blackcap a miss, park up in the city centre, and find a bar to relax and recover in before the gig that evening.  Small problem:  trigpointing isn’t for sensible people.

 

I looked up at the ridge as I drove out of Plumpton, and noted with dismay that the top was wreathed in thick grey clouds.  It was the first time all day that the weather had been less than perfect.  Surely it won’t be that bad when I get to the top?  I prayed for a sign that I’d made the right decision.  A song called Thunder In The Mountains started playing on my car stereo.  Oh, sod you, I’m going for it anyway!  Parking in the layby at the bottom of the bridleway, my blisters protested as I got out of my car and headed towards the chalky uphill track.  To be fair, the track was wide and well-defined, and cut an unmissable trail of white through the steep-sided embankments.  But it had rained the previous day, and the air was soggy and foggy right now, and chalk is a very soft rock… the water trickled rapidly down a central channel that had been carved out by years of heavy weather, which made for tough going as I trudged agonisingly through the pale muddy remnants of the path, astride of the downhill stream.  And the further up I hiked, the colder and damper and darker it got, and the more I realised I really couldn’t afford to stop for breath because there’s, what, about half an hour of the fading sunlight left, maximum…

 

I should have had a fabulous view from the Blackcap trig, and whilst it wasn’t exactly Feckenham levels of pea soup at the summit, beyond about a hundred metres, everything was enveloped in a grey haze, with rolling swirls of smoky fog blowing about across the dull green fields.  The pillar itself was surrounded by slippery grey mud, which made taking selfies a bit of a chore, but at least I’d made it before it got dark.  I could see a break in the clouds to the north, where the sky was brighter and painted in all manner of pastel shades.  On a sunny day, this trig would be spectacular.  On this day, it was eerie and atmospheric.  I slipped and slid a little more until I was happy I had all the photographic proof of achievement I wanted, and headed back down to the car.  Going down was less exhausting than going up, but staying upright was far more challenging – especially as the visibility was rapidly fading, and the deep blue darkness of the evening had arrived by the time I finished my descent.  In the weak artificial light of my car, I inspected myself…  my boots, initially dark brown, were splattered with soft white mud, as were my trousers most of the way up my shins.  I freshened myself up as best I could before heading back to Brighton, grateful that it was a punk band I had tickets for, rather than a classical concert.  I might be too knackered to rock out in my current state, but at least the venue will let my sorry dishevelled backside through the door!  I vowed to go somewhere flatter for my next trigspedition.

 

March 2025.  A short conversation on Facebook with a fellow rockbotherer revealed that there were several easily bagged pillars in the S8000s range up in the Fenlands north of Cambridge.  I’d not found anything in this range so far, so naturally my interest was piqued.  I wondered whether that area was daytrippable from Berkshire.  I figured if I got up on the Saturday morning at the hour I normally go to bed on the Friday night, it probably was.   Sleep is for tortoises, as someone once remarked.  I drew up a ridiculously ambitious list…

 

It was around 9am when I drove through the obscure little village of Aldreth, at the end of a long straight road that sort of petered out at the southern perimeter of the village.  A bridleway enabled me to continue on foot for a further kilometre beside the embankments of the long, straight drainage channels that criss-cross this strange and empty corner of England, till I reached the River Great Ouse, glistening in the morning sunlight as it wended its way across a sodden field underneath the hefty bridge that stood before me.  I had no intention of crossing said bridge, because S8068 High Bridge Farm stood proudly before it on the left hand side of the path.  My 555th trig, but my first S8000s pillar.  I dreamed happily of spreadsheets being filled in as I took a wealth of photographs to mark this momentous occasion, before gazing out from the middle of the bridge downstream… I was barely any height at all, but I could see for miles across the fields, so stunning bathed in the morning sunlight, but so very, very empty.  You wouldn’t think such a landscape would have many trigpoints in it, and yet this was already my eighth of the day, and I had my sights set on breaking my record of 18 pillars in a single trip, even with the limitation of a 6pm sunset.  And no sooner had I seriously entertained that thought…

 

S8063 Honey Hill should not have caused me any trouble – hop a gate, walk round a pond, pillar at the edge of a fallow field, easy bag.  My cargo pants had other ideas, and split when I hopped the gate.  The pillar had a lucky horseshoe on top of it, but I didn’t feel particularly lucky in my raggedy state.  I think you make a lot of your own luck, based on your experiences and the lessons you take away from them…  and my mind went back to Castle Ditches, eighteen months and four chapters ago, as I sat in my car... and changed into my spare pair.  I swore long ago I’d never make the same mistake twice!

 

I thought the Holme Fen posts were a suitably interesting local feature (why yes, I am a member of the Dull Men’s Club), and being in the vicinity, I couldn’t resist a quick detour to have a look at them.  They’re at least the height of lamp posts, and it’s almost inconceivable to think that they weren’t raised, but sunk into the eighteenth century peat so that future surveyors could measure the drop in the height of the Fens over the centuries.  Much later, the Ordnance Survey decided to put a Flush Bracket (S9274) at the base of one of them when the ground had dropped to a metre and a half below sea level.  It’s fallen another half metre or more since then, and the date stamps up the pillars dating back to Victorian times bear testament to the incredible rate at which the Fens are sinking.  As does the road that leads to it, which presumably wasn’t originally as cracked and bumpy as it is now, nor as alarmingly steep either side of the level crossing which cost me so much precious time on this detour.  I’m generally a little wary of level crossings (Ufton Nervet is practically on my doorstep, after all) but nine times out of ten when I encounter them, the barriers are raised.  The route from Ramsey St Mary’s to the Holme Fen posts is somewhat frustrating as it crosses the railway immediately before a right hand turning that then doubles back and crosses the railway again.  I’ve never had to wait for as many as four trains at a crossing before, never mind the two more that passed at the second one, and all I could think of was that I was letting valuable seconds tick away until sunset… what on Earth possessed me to abandon my trigpointing mission just to see a pair of metal poles?  I should be looking at a record-breaking number of concrete blocks instead!  You make your own luck, and I’d pushed mine too far.

 

More time was wasted at Whittlesey, where the long-term closure of the Benwick Road forced me to backtrack, write off one of the pillars on my shortlist, and figure out an alternative route.  (Unknown to me, this road had been closed to traffic for five months prior to my visit; I later learned it was re-opened barely a fortnight afterwards.)  I had plenty of opportunity to consult my atlas, though, as the diversion signs sent me straight to another level crossing in the town centre, where I had to wait for two more trains to pass… how come the trains aren’t this frequent when you actually want to catch one?  A promising start to the day had been well and truly squandered by the early afternoon, and I was fuming, even though I knew I’d still be going home with an impressive tally.  But I didn’t want to settle for merely impressive – I wanted a new personal best!  I needed some more quick and easy roadsiders to get back on track.  I found my way through Whittlesey and eventually headed east to rejoin my originally planned route at Eldernell.

 

A little used side road leads to a remarkably generous car park beside the River Nene, which I understand is used more by birdwatchers than concrete chasers, even though the car park provides easy access to S8128 Moretons Leam.  A kissing gate beside the car park opens up to a wide riverside embankment, atop which the trigpoint can be found…  some two kilometres or more away!  Whilst the flatness of the terrain provided a picturesque view across the marshy landscape to the north, it was a view that barely changed for the entire route, with next to nothing by way of landmarks to tell me how far I’d walked, or how much further off the pillar was.  But it was a lovely sunny day; the walk was enjoyable enough; and once the trig appeared on the horizon, it proved to be an easy bag.  But yet again, the clock was my enemy, and even with a trio of quick and easy roadside bags to follow it, I knew my personal best was in no danger.

 

I wanted to bag England’s lowest pillar, which is sited on the bank of the River Little Ouse at a metre below sea level.  Accessing it would require carefully negotiating a few kilometres of very poor single track roads, though, plus a decent riverside trudge…  there simply wasn’t enough time left to go for it.  I still ended the day with an extremely respectable seventeen pillars bagged in the Fens, and even though it was a glorious day and a mostly enjoyable trigspedition, I was still a little disappointed to have fallen so tantalisingly short of my personal best.  Opportunities to improve on it don’t come along often.  My final bag that day was S7535 Queens Ground, not a million miles away from the Little Ouse trig, which compounded anti-climax upon anti-climax as this pillar had recently been moved from the corner of a field to be buried in the embankment of the wide drainage ditch that surrounded it.  Sited below a roadsign, only the spider and the top few inches were visible, which made for a poor set of selfies as I lowered my creaking frame to its level.  It was an undignified end to the day.

 

But I have promised myself there will be more days.