Round Milton Keynes in low gear

Milton Keynes is 50 this year and Cath had two days of meetings, so I took the chance to explore and see how it is doing. Cycling in London is too risky for my blood but MK was built with dedicated cycle paths from the outset and it is a pleasure to get around by bike even if too many paths are alongside busy roads: this is much more like being in Holland. As well as the London bike sharing scheme, Santander also sponsor a 300 cycle scheme in MK, where they have their main admin offices.

I did scoot round the city centre looking for various boring bits and pieces for our journey to France (spare headlight bulbs, decorator's stain block, which turns out to be like knotting with a white pigment; it is curious that despite all the technical advances the resin secreted on trees by the lac beetle in the Far East when dissolved in methylated spirits is still what works best). But the main shopping centre had none of them. It does have lots of clothes, an excellent John Lewis and endless places to eat and drink. It is rather showing its age (1979) but it is listed Grade II, so it has to be kept pretty much as originally designed, which is light and airy with clerestory glazing at high level. There are rather a lot of vacant units in the lower footfall zones and I was rather surprised that the tourist information office was closed on a Friday morning. It is only staffed by volunteers, which seems shortsighted for a borough as wealthy as this. Not that there is no sign of poverty: some of the many underpasses are used for the tents and sleeping bags of the homeless and there was a queue of ill-looking folk waiting for handouts only just across and down from John Lewis.

I cycled out to the retail park north west of the city centre for Halfords and B&Q, then on to Wolvercote, which says it is the first railway town: there was a large loco works here and it has many streets of Victorian terraces. It is the industrial big brother of Stoney Stratford and is pretty much joined on. The contrast is marked. SS is a largely unspoilt market town and, like the Cotswolds, benefits from being in the oolitic limestone belt, which runs diagonally across England. Some of pictures below show the warmth and appeal of the stone. In addition there are many pubs, a major cluster of Indian restaurants and a delightful ironmonger's, where I bought washing soda. SS is a reminder of what North Bucks was like before 19th and 20th Century growth created new towns. My exploration of MK led me to feel that good for cycling though it is, the over-wide boulevards and the inhuman scale don't quite work and are looking dated. Jagoda, the Polish waitress who served me my Italian meal yesterday said that it is a boring place and she likes the villages and the countryside better. Incidentally, almost without exception, the cafe, pub and restaurant staff I met were from continental Europe. Goodness knows who will do these jobs after we depart the EU.

After a fairly tiring day out in high winds I concluded that Milton Keynes is showing its age and the effects of a reduced local authority budget. Some of the housing is reminiscent of Skelmersdale with unsatisfactory mono pitch roofs and wan buff brick. The office buildings along the boulevards tend to have the same storey heights at all levels, resulting in mean little arcades at ground floor with no street presence. The little pavilions marking the road crossings in the city centre are rusting and uncared for. Many of the pedestrian underpasses in the city centre have homeless folk, quite a number in the self-supporting pyramid tents popular at music festivals. The city has some good facilities but the road system and endless roundabouts result in a place whose design has been driven by the car and the outcome is not very human somehow. Planned towns are not always bad but the old villages and towns within MK's urban area are very welcome for their haphazard organic forms.