Chapter 17: You Can't Kill Me

Occasionally on my roadtrips, if I’d found myself somewhere particularly iconic or scenic at an ungodly hour of the morning, I’d put one of my selfies up on Facebook and invite my Friends List to guess where I was.  This amused one of my mates, and down the pub one evening she asked me when I was going to post the next one.  I was noncommittal, knowing that I had a trigspedition planned for the very next day, and less than twelve hours later I duly obliged with a selfie on the verdant bank of a large river which reflected the early morning November sun in its waters, and I invited my Facebook friends to play “Where’s The Wally?”.  I made sure to include a particularly famous bridge in the background, which if spotted, would give away my location beside the mighty River Severn.  The pillar itself - S3282 (apparently) Caldicot Moor - did not appear in my selfie because it’s been embedded in the coastal defences and is buried literally to within an inch.  If you weren’t looking for it, you could walk right past (or even over) this pillar without spotting it, which meant that - like Queens Ground earlier in the year - I had to use some creative angles to get a snap with both myself and the top surface of the pillar in it.

To remove any doubt as to which side of the England/Wales border I was exploring, two of the pillars I found that day had red dragons stencilled over their bright white paintwork.  S3324 Wentwood was a bugger to drive to, as the hill it perched on was only reachable via a particularly twisty and bumpy single track road.  And in Wales, even more than in the West Country, single track really does mean single track.  Regardless, once the very generously sized car park that serves this pillar was reached, Wentwood was a joy to visit, with the early morning sun casting pretty golden patterns across the autumn woodland paths, and the pillar itself gleaming brightly among the trees and bushes as it sat in its hiding place just off a small trail to the side.  With a little forward planning this pillar is easy enough to locate, though again, it’s unlikely you’d stumble across it by accident.  Peering through the overgrowth, some stunning views could be enjoyed, especially at this golden time of the day.  I was sorry to leave this spot.  S3344 Trelleck was in a similarly beautiful woodland location, with a similarly dragon-festooned pillar sat atop a small mound in a clearing a short distance away from a picnic bench that overlooked another typically beautiful view across a small Welsh valley.  I can only assume the picnic bench is frequently used, as I found myself pestered by a small and fearless robin which repeatedly hopped right up to my boots as if to ask for scraps.  I tend to eat in my car when I’m on a trigspedition, so I had to disappoint my chirpy new feathered friend.  The Trelleck wood is far more easily reached than Wentwood was, and a network of off-road tracks and wide footpaths that led through the woods and fields proved very popular with dog walkers and ramblers.  The location has a very patchwork feel to it, though - a plantation of tall and gloomy evergreens sat beside the pretty wood that held the pillar, and its shadowy and imposing straight-line corridors with moss-covered tree-roots criss-crossing the ground provided a very marked contrast as I trudged back to the car park.  I was very glad the pillar wasn’t hidden in that chilling and eerie setting.

If the birds in Trelleck were welcoming to humans, the horses in Kilgwrrwg – no, I’ve no idea how to pronounce all those consonants without growling like an angry bear – were rather less sociable.  S3341 Newchurch was sited below a large tree at the very edge of a private field, and the pillar’s equine guardians made their feelings about trigpointers known as soon as I approached, by walking over to the trig, turning their backs to me, raising their tails, and urinating copiously on the ground.  I took the hint and stayed on my side of the barbed wire to photograph that one.  By contrast, S3346 Gaer Hill is sited below several small trees at the very edge of a mast compound, and the neighbouring field’s sheep didn’t care about trigpointers one way or another.  They probably figured the brambles would see me off…  yep, this was another trig that was fiercely protected by a large thick clump of nature’s spikiest flora, which almost overwhelmed the gate beside the compound, and required a thorough whacking to clear a space for me to jump down to.  The trig stood on a raised embankment which ran around the perimeter of the compound, but the precise spot was obscured by further patches of jagged vegetation, which hid the fence from view.  My fears that the pillar might be buried underneath them, however, proved to be unfounded a few metres along, and whilst the space around the trig was cramped, I was breathing sighs of relief that I could take some passable selfies from all angles whilst my battledress protected me from further unwanted thorny molestations.

S6975 Craig-y-Dorth was also beside a phone mast, but this pillar was a different experience entirely.  Parking opportunities nearby were somewhat limited and a large SUV was sat in my intended spot, so I drove all around the road that encircled the pillar in search of an alternative.  Driving this road proved to be far more nerve-wracking than anything else I did on this day, as it was another of Wales’s finest hillside single-trackers, with scant passing spaces - only this one was coated in lots of slippery mud, and had an unguarded steep drop on one side.  Just got to take it slow and pray no other bugger is coming the other way!  Having survived that, I found another unobtrusive place to pull in, after which the pillar itself proved no problem, although I expect I might have been a curious sight for the telecoms engineers who were working up the mast at the time. 

I was also observed when I bagged S6770 Cockshoot Wood, which is a roadside pillar next to a grotty housing estate on the southern edge of The Forest Of Dean.  As with Hatfield the previous month, I had high hopes that my last trig of the day would be a particularly enjoyable and trouble-free bag.  A broken hand-scrawled sign requesting that the locals clear up after their dogs lay discarded in the vegetation beside the pillar, and I soon discovered the hard way that this suggestion was being totally ignored.  Clearing as much of the foul-smelling muck from my boots as I could, I looked around for a bin in which to drop my soiled tissues.  One passing dog walker told me to just drop it on the ground, seeing as it was all bio-degradable.  I’m not sure what disgusted me more – the stink from the mess or this woman’s blasé attitude to littering in such beautiful surroundings.  The Forest Of Dean is a wonderfully scenic place, so it’s sad that the people who live beside it seem actively determined to spoil it.  I found a plastic bag in my car, bagged up my litter and disposed of it at home, having kept my car windows down for the entire return journey to minimise the horrendous stench.

December then saw me return to Essex – about as far away from Dogshit City Central as I could travel.  A layby opposite a small row of houses hid S4543 Snow Hill – a quick and easy early morning bag behind a brambly hedge.  The mere act of getting out of the car triggered an incredible amount of barking from one of the houses over the road, followed by a lot of shouting, and then silence… until I returned to my car a few minutes later and the noise kicked off all over again.  This is why I’m a cat person.  S2056 Bardfield End was just up the road, beside a misty hillside field which gave me some beautiful selfies in the hazy orange glow of the sunrise.  I was then very grateful for my road atlas, which enabled me to divert around a particularly unhelpful road closure with minimum fuss – no matter how well you plan these trips, there’s always something to catch you out when you’re there.  Nevertheless, I was still able to bag S4544 Markswood, which (when the road is open) is only a short drive east of Bardfield.  This pillar is on the edge of a field whose boundary is not a hedge but a deep drainage ditch.  As I nestled in the long grass to review the selfies I’d taken, I noticed one of them was marked with a streak – I think a stray blade of grass - across the sky and over my face, like the photographs of the victims in The Omen.  I made a mental note to steer clear of spires and sheets of glass for the remainder of the day.

From a closed road to a closed PROW – in pursuit of S1905 Ropers, I encountered a wide treelined footpath between two fields which was impassably overgrown, necessitating a lengthy stumble along a particularly pitted field edge to reach the pillar.  And then came S4351 Tamizon, which was accessed via Pope’s Green Lane – a minor road near Hadleigh Heath which swiftly turns into a glorified mud track that most footpaths would put to shame.  However, it did lead to the edge of the field that the trig sat beside, and Tamizon was an easy bag.  However, England’s brambles, having suffered much whacking since I started trigpointing, finally had their revenge on me here, when I failed to see a thick strand overhanging the path on my way back.  I received a vicious clout across the face for my carelessness!  As I inspected my bleeding eyebrow in my rearviewmirror, it occurred to me that the bramble that got me must have been hanging down at exactly the same angle as the streak on the photo at Markswood.  Well, at least I can stop worrying about that now.

With all thoughts of devilry banished from my mind, I finished this trip with S4353 Hither Longfield, which brought my total number of trigpoints bagged up to 666.

Earlier in 2025, a previously unknown trig pillar was discovered on a patch of military land beside the A303, north of Barton Stacey.  White-painted 11619 Drayton Park found itself attracting a steady stream of admirers throughout the year, and I figured a great time to go for it would be around sunrise on New Year’s Day, when most normal people would be either asleep or nursing hangovers.  It was a frosty morning, and I didn’t see a soul – Drayton Park, which also doubles up as a driver training centre, was eerily deserted and I bagged the pillar in its quaint little fenced off compound with ease.  At the corner of the Park, however, are a pair of very unusual structures – two concrete pillar-shaped blocks without sight-holes or central tubes.  One of them has an indentation on one face where it looks like a plaque should be placed, and also has the usual spider mounted on its top surface.  The other one is blank and bare.  Neither carry flush brackets.  These were found shortly after the Drayton Park pillar’s discovery by a trigpointer who just happened to enter the Park from the right corner.  With hindsight, it’s surprising they went unnoticed for so long, because they are both visible from the A303 itself in winter when the leaves are off the trees.  Because the OS records never mentioned Drayton Park in the first place, there is no official explanation for 11619’s existence, let alone the nearby embryonic concrete twins – my own speculation that the builders had a couple of practice attempts first is merely guesswork on my part.  Naturally, I figured if I was going to bag the main pillar I had to get the two “auxiliary” ones as well, and it turned out there was a handy layby very close to them, with the only obstacle to accessing them being a drainage ditch that ran around the perimeter of the park.  It’s very weird seeing a pillar with a blank top surface, and I’m not sure whether it should count towards my total given that it’s not fully formed.  The Trigpointing UK website saw fit to add separate pages for them both, though, so on that basis I am considering them both to be separate trigpoints.

January 20^th 2026, and a relatively local trip around Buckinghamshire proved less than enjoyable, with the landowner at S4508 Miswell Farm disapproving of my having been in his field, and then the dense holly that encased S4455 Fieldsend scratching me to pieces.  The latter is pretty much business as usual, to be fair, but the former blotted a near-unblemished copybook even though the encounter was once again all very polite and civil.  There are no signs discouraging access to the top of the hill at Miswell Farm, and it’s a temptingly neatly-kept and beautiful location (as sheepfields go) with a great view from the trig.  But it seems the field has been beset by youths littering, starting bonfires, and scaring the sheep, so naturally the farmer is keen to deter trespassers, even though he conceded my selfie-taking was all very harmless.  And I can’t disagree with him, really.  Not for the first time, it saddens me that there are so many people who would treat the countryside with such disrespect.  I left a note on Trigpointing UK suggesting future trigpointers should ask permission here, and followed it up with a similar comment on the interest group on Facebook.

Swapping notes, asking questions, and sharing selfies with the other baggers on that Facebook page was all part of the fun, and I’d built up a series of posts there showing varying flavours of pillar being visited by the eccentric beardy bagger with the silly hats.  Indeed, Facebook was very much central to many of my interests, and over nearly two decades it had become the keystone to my geographically diverse social network and the repository of my memories. 

On February 4^th, Meta deleted my account.  No warning, no reason, and no appeal.  I was – and still am – devastated.

I’ve since created a second account and endeavoured to rebuild my Friends list, contacts, and group memberships, but my new account is a shadow of its former self, lacking the previous eighteen years of history which I’d frequently refer back to.  But like the nettles at West Knoyle (see Chapter 9) if you ever knock me down I’ll just get up again.  I’ve used a different email address to create it, and I’m not linking it to my phone (just to fox Meta’s AIs should they take issue with my online resurrection).  Sadly, this means no more posting pictures in the early morning and playing Where’s The Wally in real time, which is a shame.  As it turned out, the torrential February rain followed by a harrowing event in my real life during March all conspired to keep me away from the concrete for several weeks thereafter, but in mid-April I ensured the social media site was bombarded by beards and hats and trigs once more.

You can kill my Facebook baby, but you can’t kill me.  I’ll be seeing you again…