Pete & Reg's State Of The Nation Tour - Part 2
Posted: Mon Feb 15, 2021 12:27 pm
The Wadergate Scandal – a cover-up?
We left you last time after having visited our eastern grid reference where we found that we were Stakeholders In Society after all; and that the actual lock of Lockdown is situated, against all probability, in a field next to the M1 in Houghton Regis in Bedfordshire. Unfortunately we didn’t have the key. From there we biked round the circumference of Boris’s 7 Mile Limit to our southern grid reference where we discovered that we’d need to take something with us next time if we were to be able to visit the exact GR.
Luckily I had that something in my shed and it was duly strapped to my bar harness ready for our second outing. Here’s MuddyPete outside our base grid reference, Leighton-Linslade Town Hall. No constituents to meet and greet this time, but like any politician he just can’t help himself. Clearly it wasn’t just Europe giving us the cold shoulder…
Its GR is SP 92407 25181 (“guitar.forget.thus”). Subtracting 11265 (7 miles) from the northings gave SP 92407 13916 (“different.clean.assist”) which is our southern GR in Marsworth, Buckinghamshire. The temperature was a bracing -4c and I had six layers on top, two layers on my legs, and a furry hat under my helmet.
Off we head down the canal to be confronted by some sort of metaphor yet again. Pete surveys a burnt out boat, perhaps indicative of a sunken economy gone up in flames…
Still, we defiantly pedalled southwards pausing momentarily to assess a scene of frigid despair, and Reg optimistically tried to salvage some hope from the Field Of Shattered Dreams…
Here we see one of only two original remnants of the Leighton Buzzard sand quarry railways. This short section is now isolated and at one end trails off into the political weeds, neither coming from somewhere nor going anywhere either for that matter…
… whilst at the other end its grand ideas come to the end of the line, mired in cross-party wrangling and infighting….
The local youths, time rich but asset poor, have vented their frustrations with a roar of rage….
A diversion took us to the scene of the so-called Great Train Robbery at Bridego Bridge…
… and then to Cheddington station where we found a discarded toy, a cruel reminder of the throwaway consumer society from which we find it impossible to wean ourselves… sadly no longer anyone’s little pony…..
At this point our tentative coalition suffered a temporary divergence of directions… Reg turned to the left whilst Pete went right, ploughing separate courses until a reunification at Cheddington roundabout where we patched up our differences and formed a centre-leaning alliance allowing us to push policies through that brought us to the sunlit uplands at Marsworth Reservoir and our ultimate destination. This turned out to be our very own “Wadergate Scandal” as Reg donned the eponymous item of clothing so that he could bike into and then finally wade through the frozen marsh and three-feet-deep water to the exact grid reference 20 yards offshore to the baffled stares of the passing electorate. Despite being off-shored, we think this GR is unlikely to become a tax haven.
Turning to follow the circumference of our 7-mile “exercise zone” we passed yet another unfinished infrastructure project, a PFI initiative gone wrong, seemingly a gateway to nowhere. A fly-tipped computer and chair, and an empty Viagra box, perhaps showed a local populace now out of work but finding other ways and means of keeping themselves gainfully employed with one-on-one constituency consultations….
Reg decided to follow their example and press the flesh with some local voters, unfortunately he ended up just having a “strawman argument”….
Unfortunately we had to cancel a visit to our next location as they are not permitting visitors until at least 2022…
After following our noses along various remote lanes and tracks we arrived at the village of Hoggeston, location of our western GR which we’ll visit next time on our third canvassing outing around our constituency. Rather than GRs all we cared about at this point was refreshments in the House Of Commons Tea Room And Bar, but we had to fall back on a roadside brew up. The debating chamber was packed (albeit socially-distanced of course) as the two sides skirmished and argued about the relative merits of meths versus gas stoves. This would rumble on and on for the whole length of the current parliament with no definitive outcome or list of actions whatsoever. The political temperature had been lowered several degrees all day to be honest, to the extent that Reg Perrin MP’s waterbottle had started to ice up. -4c was registered on the church steps.
On the way to pre-inspecting the western GR – in the middle of a field after a bit of hike-a-bike – we stopped to have a guided tour of the farm cess tank, although unfortunately we’d forgotten the obligatory HiVis jackets and helmets which are supposed to make us look like we’re one of the engineering team and know what we’re talking about when plainly we haven’t got the first clue about it and are just there for the photo opportunity.
Here we are with proof that we restricted our permitted exercise to the Seven Mile Boris Limit.
We continued on our way, trying to stick to the straight and narrow path of political righteousness, and indeed of the OS map, and ended up following a dead-end lane which gradually petered (or possibly Petered) out onto a strange concrete field. This might again have turned out to be an unfinished white elephant project of some sort, but we soon realised that we’d stepped back in time to when Britain Was Great Again – it was an old WW2 airfield, complete with runway. Here’s Pete attempting to take off and show Johnny foreigner the stiff upper lips we’re made from. Interestingly the airfield is near the village of Wing, so we presumed that radio communications during the war must have taken on an “Airplane!” tinge occasionally: “Hello, is that Wing? This is Wing Commander Wingfield requesting landing on the field because my wings have iced up”. The Wiki information reads: “the motto written on the Navigation Section at Wing was “MAN IS NOT LOST”. Someone had written graffiti under this: “But occasionally is completely unaware of his exact location” – which is of course also an entirely fitting description of bikepacking! Well, of our type of fartaround, layabout, see-what-happens bikepacking anyway. The local airmen used to cycle to the pub in Wing - sadly it seems that viruses have now succeeded where the Wehrmacht failed.
As it transpired, the airfield had fallen on hard times and was now the site of a gigantic chicken farm (marketed as Wing's Chicken Wings?). We couldn’t see any running around in a panic with their heads cut off – we’ll leave that until we return to our political base later – and Pete had little luck trying to use the official wheel wash due to the fact that it was frozen solid. We also recce’d a potential bivvy spot in an old bunker but decided to depart before any fowl deeds befell us.
And so back to base at the White House. On the way we had lost our map – but not our way, or indeed our marbles. A night-flying raid is planned next time to retrieve it.
Join us next time when we will stand pointlessly in a field before progressing onwards to Station X…….
We left you last time after having visited our eastern grid reference where we found that we were Stakeholders In Society after all; and that the actual lock of Lockdown is situated, against all probability, in a field next to the M1 in Houghton Regis in Bedfordshire. Unfortunately we didn’t have the key. From there we biked round the circumference of Boris’s 7 Mile Limit to our southern grid reference where we discovered that we’d need to take something with us next time if we were to be able to visit the exact GR.
Luckily I had that something in my shed and it was duly strapped to my bar harness ready for our second outing. Here’s MuddyPete outside our base grid reference, Leighton-Linslade Town Hall. No constituents to meet and greet this time, but like any politician he just can’t help himself. Clearly it wasn’t just Europe giving us the cold shoulder…
Its GR is SP 92407 25181 (“guitar.forget.thus”). Subtracting 11265 (7 miles) from the northings gave SP 92407 13916 (“different.clean.assist”) which is our southern GR in Marsworth, Buckinghamshire. The temperature was a bracing -4c and I had six layers on top, two layers on my legs, and a furry hat under my helmet.
Off we head down the canal to be confronted by some sort of metaphor yet again. Pete surveys a burnt out boat, perhaps indicative of a sunken economy gone up in flames…
Still, we defiantly pedalled southwards pausing momentarily to assess a scene of frigid despair, and Reg optimistically tried to salvage some hope from the Field Of Shattered Dreams…
Here we see one of only two original remnants of the Leighton Buzzard sand quarry railways. This short section is now isolated and at one end trails off into the political weeds, neither coming from somewhere nor going anywhere either for that matter…
… whilst at the other end its grand ideas come to the end of the line, mired in cross-party wrangling and infighting….
The local youths, time rich but asset poor, have vented their frustrations with a roar of rage….
A diversion took us to the scene of the so-called Great Train Robbery at Bridego Bridge…
… and then to Cheddington station where we found a discarded toy, a cruel reminder of the throwaway consumer society from which we find it impossible to wean ourselves… sadly no longer anyone’s little pony…..
At this point our tentative coalition suffered a temporary divergence of directions… Reg turned to the left whilst Pete went right, ploughing separate courses until a reunification at Cheddington roundabout where we patched up our differences and formed a centre-leaning alliance allowing us to push policies through that brought us to the sunlit uplands at Marsworth Reservoir and our ultimate destination. This turned out to be our very own “Wadergate Scandal” as Reg donned the eponymous item of clothing so that he could bike into and then finally wade through the frozen marsh and three-feet-deep water to the exact grid reference 20 yards offshore to the baffled stares of the passing electorate. Despite being off-shored, we think this GR is unlikely to become a tax haven.
Turning to follow the circumference of our 7-mile “exercise zone” we passed yet another unfinished infrastructure project, a PFI initiative gone wrong, seemingly a gateway to nowhere. A fly-tipped computer and chair, and an empty Viagra box, perhaps showed a local populace now out of work but finding other ways and means of keeping themselves gainfully employed with one-on-one constituency consultations….
Reg decided to follow their example and press the flesh with some local voters, unfortunately he ended up just having a “strawman argument”….
Unfortunately we had to cancel a visit to our next location as they are not permitting visitors until at least 2022…
After following our noses along various remote lanes and tracks we arrived at the village of Hoggeston, location of our western GR which we’ll visit next time on our third canvassing outing around our constituency. Rather than GRs all we cared about at this point was refreshments in the House Of Commons Tea Room And Bar, but we had to fall back on a roadside brew up. The debating chamber was packed (albeit socially-distanced of course) as the two sides skirmished and argued about the relative merits of meths versus gas stoves. This would rumble on and on for the whole length of the current parliament with no definitive outcome or list of actions whatsoever. The political temperature had been lowered several degrees all day to be honest, to the extent that Reg Perrin MP’s waterbottle had started to ice up. -4c was registered on the church steps.
On the way to pre-inspecting the western GR – in the middle of a field after a bit of hike-a-bike – we stopped to have a guided tour of the farm cess tank, although unfortunately we’d forgotten the obligatory HiVis jackets and helmets which are supposed to make us look like we’re one of the engineering team and know what we’re talking about when plainly we haven’t got the first clue about it and are just there for the photo opportunity.
Here we are with proof that we restricted our permitted exercise to the Seven Mile Boris Limit.
We continued on our way, trying to stick to the straight and narrow path of political righteousness, and indeed of the OS map, and ended up following a dead-end lane which gradually petered (or possibly Petered) out onto a strange concrete field. This might again have turned out to be an unfinished white elephant project of some sort, but we soon realised that we’d stepped back in time to when Britain Was Great Again – it was an old WW2 airfield, complete with runway. Here’s Pete attempting to take off and show Johnny foreigner the stiff upper lips we’re made from. Interestingly the airfield is near the village of Wing, so we presumed that radio communications during the war must have taken on an “Airplane!” tinge occasionally: “Hello, is that Wing? This is Wing Commander Wingfield requesting landing on the field because my wings have iced up”. The Wiki information reads: “the motto written on the Navigation Section at Wing was “MAN IS NOT LOST”. Someone had written graffiti under this: “But occasionally is completely unaware of his exact location” – which is of course also an entirely fitting description of bikepacking! Well, of our type of fartaround, layabout, see-what-happens bikepacking anyway. The local airmen used to cycle to the pub in Wing - sadly it seems that viruses have now succeeded where the Wehrmacht failed.
As it transpired, the airfield had fallen on hard times and was now the site of a gigantic chicken farm (marketed as Wing's Chicken Wings?). We couldn’t see any running around in a panic with their heads cut off – we’ll leave that until we return to our political base later – and Pete had little luck trying to use the official wheel wash due to the fact that it was frozen solid. We also recce’d a potential bivvy spot in an old bunker but decided to depart before any fowl deeds befell us.
And so back to base at the White House. On the way we had lost our map – but not our way, or indeed our marbles. A night-flying raid is planned next time to retrieve it.
Join us next time when we will stand pointlessly in a field before progressing onwards to Station X…….