Bow Brickhill

County – Milton Keynes

Elevation - 171m

Date – 27 March 2023

Distance – 0.95km

Elevation Climbed - 20m

Status – 30th highest Unitary authority/74th highest LA

County Topping adds a frisson of excitement to otherwise-mundane journey planning. "Is there a Top en route?" I now ask myself, when planning to go anywhere. Problem is, I've done most of the southern Tops within easy access of motorways...and then I remembered Milton Keynes.

Poor old Milton Keynes gets a bad press. "It's just roundabouts and concrete cows", say the

uninitiated. And indeed, I wasn't expecting much when I clocked that the CT was just a couple of miles from Junction 13 of the M1.

How wrong I was! Outside of the modernist carbuncle of England's largest New Town lay a number of quaint villages, captured within the boundary when MK was hived off from Buckinghamshire in the 90s. One of these - Bow Brickhill - is plastered to the side of a steep hill, atop of which is the highest point in the borough

Thankfully (because I was short of time) I didn't have to hoof the 171m to the top up the super-steep hill, as there's a handy car park squeezed in between a golf course and the woods at the top, although it was full of boy racers comparing their souped-up dickmobiles when I arrived.

A half-km mooch through some pleasant oak and birch woodlands eventually led to a clearing in the rhododendrons where the trig point marking the top had nestled itself away.

I wandered back the car, down the hill, and then found myself in a maze of bizarelly-coded roundabouts as I tried to navigate back to the M1. Bloody Milton Keynes.