1:40: Old Shire Lane
I should have finished long since, but for unwanted engineering. I started as planned where I left off and completed the Boundary Path to Batchworth Heath, then entered Bishop’s Wood where, despite a minute or two of doubt, I managed to follow the planned path through the wood, and across Woodcock Hill. After Fieldways Farm the route nips across the north-westernmost corner of Middlesex down to the Colne and the Grand Union Canal, across which I re-entered Hertfordshire.
In this stretch I came across a sponsored walk in aid of the Michael Sobell Hospice; a popular walk by the numbers I greeted.
After Coppermill Lock I left the charity walkers. I walked south beside the canal and then crossed between the lakes and to the southernmost point of Hertfordshire. So far, so good.
Old Shire Lane begins at the Uxbridge Road, at the Buckinghamshire border. I followed this wooded path west and north, on the county border, and intended to follow it all the way to Chorleywood, but north of the path the whole landscape is filled with the works for the HS2 line Then when I got to a cross-track I found that the Department of Cussedness has closed Old Shire Lane, rot them.
I therefore took a long diversion out to Chalfont St Peter, and a path back – which itself was blocked when I got to the end. (Never mind how I got to the lane again.) The roads have been messed around so much that I missed the footpath part of Old Shire Lane and so had a diversion-from-the-diversion-from-the diversion. Hence being very far behind time (that and sitting down to blog it).
It should now be a straight run in from here; well, let’s see.
See: Hertfordshire Border Walk
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