Concrete is Fun and Interesting... Honest!

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 w...

Lesson Twelve:   No matter how briefly you stop, Sod’s Law dictates that if you park in front of a gate, someone will want to go through it whilst you’re there. I had the bad luck to be stuck behind a tractor with a trailer full of livestock for the last couple of miles to the Brompton Ralph trig.  I didn’t especially want to overtake it (not that I could have, Somerset’s lanes being of barely sufficient width to accommodate a tractor in the first place), so I sat patiently behind it, cursing quietly every time it failed to turn off at a junction.  After a little while, quite a queue had built up behind me, and noticing this, the driver of the tractor kindly pulled in to let everyone pass.  Naturally, the place he chose to pull in was in front of the gate to the trig field – exactly the place I wanted to stop myself.  Hoping this wouldn’t set the tone for the day (and praying he wasn’t about to unload his four-legged cargo into that field), I overtook, turned of...

I was back before July was out.  S1906 Milton Hill and S1907 Inham Downs gave me a run of six consecutive pillars.  The former was stained slightly red, perhaps appropriately as the path to it led past some trees planted as memorials for local soldiers, fallen in the two world wars.  Martinsell was visible on the horizon; I was grateful that the wood surrounding this pillar wasn’t as dense or impenetrable as that one had been.  The latter led me through fields of cattle, but these were safely penned in behind electric fences.  It rained as I trudged across the open field to the pillar, and I struggled to take selfies with my phone in one hand and my umbrella in the other.  S2172 Knighton Down (Larkhill) was on military land, on a mound next to a training centre on the edge of Salisbury Plain.  A soldier sat in a pickup truck beside the mound.  I asked if it would be okay to nip up and bag the pillar; he told me people weren’t normally allowed up t...

May Day morning I found myself outside a rugby club in Swansea, taking pictures of a rather unloved lump of concrete next to some railings beside the car park.  S3544 Cefn Hengoed: the first name on my spreadsheet I have absolutely no idea how to pronounce… but by no means the last!  Croeso y Abertawe…   Cefn Hengoed wasn’t exactly an example of the beautiful views I was anticipating, but at least the pillar was intact and vertical.  A short drive later, and my second Welsh pillar made Cefn Hengoed look glamorous by comparison.  S2064 Pen Lan Fach was beside a water tower in Swansea itself, but a very sorry sight greeted me when I arrived there – a scrubby patch of wasteland behind yet more railings was strewn with litter, and the pillar itself looked significantly battered, having been bashed about, uprooted, and robbed of all its metalwork.  It barely resembled a trigpoint at all.  And to add insult to injury, the thing was covered in broken beer bot...