The Sketch
A day spent wandering around Brogborough in Bedfordshire. There were a couple of series in the area with a possible extension up to Cranfield. I spent this day with Candleford, who fancied the area for caching but didn’t fancy walking around there alone. She’d suggested it a week before at a local GIFF event. Fair enough, I’m not so keen on caching alone now. The two series concerned, with the Cranfield extension, came to about 50 possible finds, which is decent for a day in November.
We met at some unearthly hour in the car park at Brogborough Village Hall. It was only just getting light, and funnily enough, there was nobody else around.
Brog For 21 and the Cranfield Dirty Dozen
The first series we attempted was the Brog For 21, which runs north from the village over the A421 and towards Cranfield. It started in the village and then led us north and east over the main road and into some agricultural land. There was a wood at northern end which allowed us to extend around the
Back at the plot, we got back into the woods and followed the Brog Fro 21 series back to where we’d started. This part was somewhat less scenic than the outbound stretch. It’s a part that runs alongside the now-covered landfill site. That’s now been covered with earth and a very large number of pipes to capture escaping methane. The methane is collected and pumped to a 30MW power station on the other side of the mound from where we were. It’s nice to know that lots of my own former household waste is being used to power my current house, sort-of.
Some of the pathways down this side were muddy and slippery as well as not-so-scenic.
Brog Too 19
The Brog Too 19 series loops out from the other side of Brogborough towards Ridgmont Railway Station, crossing over the railway line and back again.
We walked this series in reverse number order. After a couple of caches we were faced with a real Moby Dick of a cache. Supposedly it’s a small container disguised on or near a tree. However, there were loads of immature trees within a 20 yard radius and a long fence. It could have been anywhere in there. After about 20 minutes we gave up.
This series continued to be quite unfulfilling. We missed a couple more. One that was a special container was obviously completely missing. And generally it was getting to be hard work. Also, time was marching on. We therefore took the decision to cut it short and just do the bottom half. That was still enough to get the codes for the bonus cache, but we were generally a bit disappointed with the walk.
Drive-Bys
Back at the cars Candleford said she’d humour me by doing the Adventure Labs series along the Marston Vale Line as well as those in Stewartby. That meant driving most of the way up to Bedford and back again. That was fine though. We both jumped in my car, to save the planet very fractionally.
A number of the labs could be done from inside the car, by guessing the numbers. In Stewartby though, we had to get out for most of them. There were a few other caches there too, most of which Candleford had done already.
We finished the caching day by driving right up to Kempston Hardwick for the last lab of the Marston Vale series, followed by coming back slightly for the bonus cache of that series.
Thankfully Candleford’s car was where she’d left it.
We’d (well, I’d) made 55 finds during the day, which is a top day out for this time of year. I almost certainly won’t return for the rest of Brog Too 19 though. There’s not enough and it wasn’t nice enough to warrant going back.
