The Ascent - Tue Nov 1

If you walk along Queensway in Bletchley and further on up into the centre of Fenny Stratford, it’s almost like you’re not in Milton Keynes at all. Though you are, whatever the locals may think. Check the maps if you don’t believe me. But that stretch, almost more than any other in town, feels like you could be anywhere in England, in any small grimy post-Victorian industrial sprawl. The outskirts of Bedford, Northampton, Worksop, Crewe. The roundabouts, open park land and redways feel like they’re more than a million miles away.

Yes, this is me. Ticking off more estates as the year counts down. Fenny Stratford, Fenny Lock. For me, one of the most pleasurable things I can conceive is somehow stumbling upon a stretch of rambling in MK that I have never before trod – and last week when I came to do this circuit I found just such an undiscovered land: the canal towpath north from the A5 at Fenny towards Simpson. Brilliant.

It contains the Actual Fenny Lock, which I had never ever seen before. I can scarcely believe such a thing is possible, but there you go. It’s a beautiful old-school lock with attendant cottages festooned with hanging baskets and pleasantly decorated exteriors, another million miles away from the dour industrial maze of Denbigh East behind it. There’s even a pub, the Red Lion, which looks like it could be a great place to hang out. I had literally no idea.

Further along the towpath the canal goes under the busy H10 at the same time as being above the Simpson road below it to the right. It’s quite a complicated interchange of travelways, and across the giant support pillars of the road bridge someone has emblazoned the graffito: “No Tesco In Fenny”. Someone else has subsequently altered the last word. Can you guess what they have done?

Halfway up the next stretch of towpath, I climbed up and crossed over a disused canal bridge to nowhere. Or, to be more accurate, a disused canal bridge which led to an overgrown path through some dense brambly bushes which eventually leads you out into the back of the Mount Farm industrial estate. From which you can catch the number 5 home again in time for brunch. Ch-ch ching ching!