Mill Hill

County – North Northamptonshire

Elevation - 161m

Date – 21 September 2022

Distance – 8km

Elevation Climbed - 55m

Status – 32nd highest Unitary Authority top

One of the beautiful things about local government reorganisation (one of many, I'm sure you'd agree) is the creation of new County Tops. When I climbed Arbury Hill in 2021 I was not only capturing the historical CT of Northants but also the "new" CT of West Northants. After some financial shenanigans the old county of Northamptonshire was divided into two new unitary authorities, West Northants and North Northants. That also meant one more CT for me to climb...

...and as luck would have it I was working in Northampton. Rather than stay in a Premier Inn in town, I elected to find a little Airbnb in the lovely village of Brixworth which was but a short drive from the new Top of Mill Hill. I chose the village of Harrington (equally lovely - Northants is full of these sweet little stone villages) and set off.

The downside of this walk was that it was bisected by the A46. This whacking great dual carriageway significantly impacted crossing opportunities, making the walk a lot longer than it needed to be, and was also bloody noisy. Once I'd finally got over it (using an old railway turned into a long distance footpath), I headed through some big stony yellowhammer-filled fields and came upon...a Cold War nuclear missile.

This is a Thor missile. Just south of the Top was an old airfield which prior to the moving of all the UK's nuclear deterrent to Polaris submarines was the launch site of Britain's stock of intercontinental ballistic missiles, one of which was left over to rot behind a small museum. Who'd have guessed that this quiet part of the East Midlands would have been ready to wipe out Moscow??

I found the County Top at the north end of the disused airfield which had housed the launch pads (they were miles away so I didn't go and peek, sadly). It wasn't much to write home about.