On the way back from Cambridge
we took a diversion to Grafham Water.
This was self indulgent nostalgia for me :)
In the mid 60's we went to the East Coast for our holidays,
to a quaint old town, called Southwold, where my Gran came from.
On route we stopped off at a brand new lake called Grafham Water.
Googling it after my visit I discovered that it was built to supply water to the new town of Milton Keynes.
I expected that my parents had read about it
in one of the national newspapers.
With 4 children in the car, attempting a journey of nearly 200 miles
at a speed of around 30 miles an hour......
we were always grateful for a place to stop and let of some steam!
As we approached Grafham Water,
the approach route is so unlikely,
yet the signposts encouraged us to keep going,
down these twisty minor roads.
The thought of a cup of coffee was a great incentive!
My chauffeur asked how large the lake was....
I cast my mind back over 40 years, and tried to remember....
how do you visually measure water?
A mile across possibly?
The trees had grown up significantly in the intervening years,
in my mind it was far more open.
We sat down to enjoy our coffee
and then there was a mass of greenfly everywhere
millions of them
so we retreated inside to enjoy our drinks,
before wandering down to the waters edge.
It's named after one of the villages that was drowned - if you know it well you can see the roads that used to go to those missing villages just disappearing into the water, and during drought seasons, you can see the road and house sites reappearing.
