Patrick Comerford
I had planned to join a walk in the middle of last week with clergy colleagues in the Milton Keynes area, beginning at the Cricket Pavilion and continuing around Campbell Park or down to the coffee shop at Willen Lake.
But it was mid-term break for most parents with children at school. So, instead, the two of us who turned up took a short walk through the park and we ended up at Campbell Wharf Marina.
This was my first time at Campbell Wharf Marina, which is within a range of walking routes, places to eat and drink, leisure areas such as Willen Lake, and a network of over 40 parks maintained by the Milton Keynes Parks Trust.
Willen Lake nearby offers a variety of water sports and outdoor activities, while Campbell Park hosts a variety of events year-round, including music performances and cultural festivals.
This picturesque wharf and marina are on the Grand Union Canal, with 111 berths. It has been designed to accommodate wide beams, narrowboats and cruisers and is suitable for people in search of both leisure and long-term moorings.
The marina was built in 2019 as part of the wider Campbell Wharf development by Crest Nicolson. The marina has excellent facilities and is finished to a high standard with non-slip glass-reinforced plastic jetties, state-of-the-art aluminium service bollards, and accessible Wi-Fi. It is now owned by the Parks Trust, and is operated on behalf of the trust by Geomac.
The Grand Union Canal is the principal navigable waterway between London and the Midlands. Starting in London, one arm runs to Leicester and another ends in Birmingham, with the canal to Birmingham stretching for 220 km (137 miles), with 166 locks from London.
The Grand Union Canal enters Milton Keynes at the outskirts of Bletchley at Fenny Stratford Lock, traverses the modern New Bradwell Aqueduct, and leaves Milton Keynes at Wolverton, running on a high embankment before passing over the Great Ouse at Cosgrove aqueduct.
The food and drink options at the Campbell Wharf Marina in Milton Keynes include the Warbler on the Wharf pub and Canal St Coffee.
Warbler on the Wharf opened in 2022. It has two floors of dining space, with a defined bar area complete with a roaring fire. The pub also has an outside terrace and a south-facing beer garden overlooking the marina and the canal.
We sat for an hour outside Canal St Coffee overlooking the wharf, the canal and the boats, sipping coffee, comparing ministerial experiences and memories of Athens and Patmos.
After strolling around the wharf, the boats and the canal banks, I made way back to the cricket pavilion and passed some interesting sculptors, and then on through Campbell Park to the Light Pyramid and the Milton Keynes Rose.
But more about those sculptures and about cricket in Milton Keynes on another day, hopefully.
Three minutes of calm at Campbell Wharf in April sunshine (Patrick Comerford, 2025)
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