Concrete is Fun and Interesting... Honest!

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 i...

I had a run of three consecutive pillars from S1530 through S1532, which I could turn into a run of six if I bagged the next two, as I also had S1535.  Additionally, S1534 Cold Ashby was of historical interest, being the very first pillar to be used by the Ordnance Survey in their retriangulation of Great Britain, way back in the 1930s.  Northamptonshire was a little further out from my home base than most of my previous trips, but there were some suitably fast roads to take me there, and I figured Cold Ashby was doable if I made it the top end of a loop.  I studied the map.  Yeah, I can do this… I nearly did myself some serious damage en route.  S6740 Nippets was a hedge-dweller beside a cornfield.  There was an easily accessed track on the other side of the hedge, which I would probably be able to photograph the pillar from, but the logs noted that the flush bracket faced into the field, so I deemed that side to be preferable.  Unfortunately, access ...

I was struck by the exceptional beauty of this little patch of England, and with a number of potential bags still out there, I set my sights on returning to the South Downs the following fortnight to hoover up some more.  The region did not disappoint.  S1814 Coneyhurst Hill had been given a fresh coat of white paint to distinguish it from the pillar-shaped National Trust donation box that shared its hilltop location.  Another one with a fabulous view, too.  S1813 Froggetts Farm was playing host to a herd of deer, who were grazing in the field containing the trig, but who quickly bolted as soon as I hopped the stile into it.  S6411 Flexham Park was the subject of a YouTube video mere days after my visit, describing it as a lost trig.  It’s not so much lost as very well obscured from view, being in a dense coppiced wood with no paths or clearings.  Another one for which GPS is generally recommended, but for which the advice “keep going up” is all I need...

Lesson Seven:   There’s little point being a trigpointer if you don’t have a head for heights.   I had admired S2533 Cley Hill from afar, passing it some distance away when my wife and I paid a visit to Longleat Safari Park a couple of years earlier.  It looked like it would offer a particularly fabulous view, and the revelation that it had a trig pillar on top of it was about as surprising as Christmas landing on December 25 th .  I planned a roadtrip that led directly to it (the smaller the car park, the earlier in the morning you want to get there), and then mapped out a rambling journey back home that took in ten more pillars.  May 31 st  was a beautiful morning, bright and clear.  Arriving in a half-empty car park, I proceeded to follow the footpath to the hill and then up the side.  It was very steep – moreso than anything I’d previously encountered.  And I… well, let’s just say I would make a very poor mountaineer, and I’ve no plans to...