Inspiration for a Millennium Cycleway milepost?

We'll be on the move again soon, meanwhile here are a couple of photos of a severely lopped tree alongside the GU south of Stoke Bruerne.

It bears a resemblance to some of the Millennium National Cycleway marker posts.

There's at least one on the towpath of the Market Harborough Arm. I didn't take a piccie of that, but here's one I found on Wikipedia.

Andy Stephenson [CC BY-SA 2.0 (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/2.0)], via Wikimedia Commons

Apparently it's the "Fossil Tree" post - no wonder it looks similar. (This particular one is by Loch Dee.)

info from https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Cycle_Network