Saturday 22 August 2026: Day Out - Ouse, Ivel and Greensand

The weather was certainly fabulous - sunny and warm, not too hot, a light breeze.  Seven of us gathered at 0830 at St Albans City station and an hour later we were disembarking at Bedford Midland, which has the tiniest and slowest lifts of any station we know of.

Gently through the Victorian side streets to gain the riverside, over the Riverside Bridge, opened in 2017 as part of the Riverside North Development.  There are a lot of bridges over the Great Ouse and its several channels.  Upstream is the County Bridge, not nice to cycle over.  Downstream is the old Town Bridge, which we cycled under.  We went over the Abbey Bridge by the weir onto the island of Mill Meadow and we cycled past the 1888 Suspension Bridge over the main channel.  A small linking bridge took us onto Longholme Island then we crossed the Butterfly Bridge of 1997, which got us to Russell Park where we had morning coffee at the Mini Golf Kiosk.

Back to the Embankment, we ducked under Longholme Way, rode past the Leisure Park and joined the NCN51 route along the old railway line.  At Willington we diverted through the village so we could admire the Tudor Dovecote and Stables, now owned by the National Trust, open occasional summer Sundays.

Eastward, through extensive past and active sand and gravel workings, the Great Ouse curves away northward and the railway route becomes NCN12. Having admired the Old Station House at Blunham we then crossed the Ivel as we approached Sandy. After a wiggle through housing estates  we popped out in the town centre, and shortly turned off onto the Greensand Ridge Cycleway, a 42 mile route connecting Leighton Buzzard and Gamlingay.

This section first took us down a little lane and then on a track across the Ivel meadows.

That got us to Beeston, a hamlet split in two by the roaring A1.  We got across using the footbridge, which has been provided with cycle-channels to make it easier to push your bike up and down, but they are too close to the guardrail to be useable.  The western half of Beeston is charming, we ducked around Hatch on a bridleway and were soon ensconced at Franklins Farm in Thorncote for lunch at the Dairy Cafe.

We had not rushed but we had made good enough time to then bimble up to the Cowshed Cafe for post-prandial hot and cold drinks and ice creams.

From the Cowshed it is a swooping downhill to Cople.  Thanks to BT Openreach closing the road to to motor vehicles and leaving a gap for cyclists and walkers to get through we had a very pleasant run along to Cardington.  A wiggle around the A428 and its slip roads and we were riding through the Business Park and into Priory Country Park.

We were very entertained - and mightily impressed - by a minibus with a trailer of kayaks making its way over the access bridge near the lock.  An extremely tight fit, fag-paper clearance!

After this excitement, it was quietly through the park and back onto the railway line and then the embankment to return to the station in perfect time for getting ourselves onto a southbound train.

22 miles covered at a steady pace.