A rainy morning over the Bedfordshire lowlands, with scents of wood smoke on the wind. A flock of bluetits led us south from Houghton Conquest, flitting from one hedge to the next.
First published in: The Times Click here to view a map for this walk in a new window
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We left them for heavy clay fields where every hawthorn spray dangled a row of trembling rain globes. It was hard enough work plodding through the ploughlands, but once up on the green breast of the Delectable Hills we scooted forward with the wind in our sails and House Beautiful in our sights.
It was the local tinker’s son John Bunyan who dreamed up House Beautiful and the Delectable Hills in the 1670s, as he gazed from his native plain to the hills that filled the southern view. The greensand chalk ridge that looks down on Bedford may only be a couple of hundred feet high, but in this low-lying countryside it rears up to dominate the prospect. In between spells of ecstatic non-conformist preaching and dark periods in Bedford Jail for spreading sedition, Bunyan worked the local scene into the backdrops of his Christian polemic masterpiece The Pilgrim’s Progress. The rolling, tree-topped hills stood right on his southern doorstep; and there at their crown rose Houghton House, model for ‘House Beautiful’ with its great red walls and rows of sun-reflecting windows.
We found House Beautiful a haunting, hollow shell. This former hunting lodge of the Countess of Pembroke, embellished by Inigo Jones and visited by kings and courtiers, gazed blank-eyed across the fields, its rooms pooled with rainwater. We lingered in the porch, looking out on the prospect, watching slaty rainclouds and white cumulus chasing from the Midlands towards East Anglia. The heart-aching pull of a grand house in ruin is hard to explain, but it exerts strong magic all right.
Siskins with canary-yellow throats and cross little eyebrows bounced in and out of the bushes as we followed the ridge lane into King’s Wood. Bluebells carpeted the floor of the ancient woodland, a nature reserve these days. Down the slippery track, out across ridge and farrow fields, and back towards Houghton Conquest in gleams of weak sunshine.
In the fields near the village an elderly black Labrador greeted us with a Capstan Full Strength bark of 60-a-day hoarseness. ‘Silly old fool, aren’t you?’ murmured his owner. I think she meant the dog.
Start & finish: Royal Oak PH, Houghton Conquest, MK45 3LL (OS ref TL 047416)
Getting there: Rail (www.thetrainline.com) to Flitwick (5 miles). Bus service 42, Grant Palmer (www.grantpalmer.com). Road: Houghton Conquest signed from A6, 4 miles south of Bedford.
Walk: (4½ miles, easy, OS Explorers 208 and 193): From Royal Oak PH, left along High Street; left along Rectory Lane. Just before Old Rectory, right (045412, ‘Houghton Conquest Meadows, King’s Wood’). Through kissing gate, turn left. Beside 7-barred metal gate, right (045411); follow fenced path, then yellow-topped posts and ‘Marston Vale Timberland Trail’ signs for 1½ miles across fields and up past Houghton Park House to entrance to Houghton House ruin (040392). Visit House; return to drive entrance. Right for 50 m, then left (yellow-topped post, ‘Greensand Ridge Walk’). Follow farm track into King’s Wood (045394); permissive path down to bottom of wood (045405). Through gate; right (arrows); through kissing gate; ahead along bottom edge of coppice. In 200m, left through gate (047406, arrow); follow arrows to right of Old Rectory, back to Houghton Conquest.
Lunch: Royal Oak, Houghton Conquest (01234-740459 – open 4 pm-11, Mon-Fri; 12-11 Sat, Sun); or picnic at Houghton House.
Information: Bedford TIC (01234-221712); www.visitbedford.co.uk