Month: January 2021

Coombe Hill: the theme is mud

Continuing a theme of welly walks in the Chilterns, we found a route recommended by the National Trust, from their car park on Coombe Hill. This hill is best known for the monument at its peak, and some walkers were going up to that and just coming back again, but there is more to be seen by getting lost in the woods. A walk of three and a half miles, it was a perfect walk for a family morning out in December.

The nearest hamlet is Dunsmore, but there is nowhere to park conveniently in Dunsmore without causing an obstruction, so the car park is the best starting point.

The path heads out into the woods: go in the opposite direction from the crowd heading for the summit. The path, followed carefully, leads southwards through the Low Scrubs and the presumably more elevated High Scrubs, in a long and very deeply muddy path up to the lovely crossroads in Dunsmore, with its fingerpost and pond.

Turning westwards, there is a short walk along the lane out of the hamlet, before turning west into the woods again (Fugsdon Wood, then Linton’s Wood) to the edge of the Chiltern escarpment. Here we turned north, along the Ridgeway path.

(This next stretch is one I incorporated in ‘the Resignation Way‘ as far as the summit, as it provides a route to walk concealed from cameras away from the gate of Chequers towards the station in Wendover.)

The route continues northwards, eventually breaking from the cover of the woods to look out down from the scarp and over the Vale of Aylesbury beyond; a wide horizon and a landscape dotted with church spires, farms and grand houses.

On the summit of Coombe Hill stands a tall monument to those local men who fell in the Boer War, listed on plaques on the face of the pillar. It must be one of the earlier monumental tributes not to an individual officer but to ordinary men of all ranks who fell in service of Queen and Empire. Looking down, we could see the back of the Prime Minister’s official country residence, Chequers (and here the Resignation Way turns away at its last view of the house).

From the monument is a quieter walk over the to of the hill, turning then south beside not through the woods back to the National Trust car park.

Maps

Route map

New Year at Christmas (Common)

Happy New Year, looking forward to 2021. This year we greeted the year around Christmas Common in Oxfordshire.

(A difficulty with listing recent walks, is that certain people of ill-will may look upon the list under their furrowed eyebrows and treat it like a charge-sheet in waiting. However actually, even under the strictest rules, going out for exercise is legal. So there.)

Christmas Common is a hamlet in the Chilterns, near the escarpment above the village of Watlington. It is in Oxfordshire, close by the Buckinghamshire border, and close by Oxfordshire’s highest point too (Cowleaze Wood).

The National Trust car park was a convenient place to start. It is begirt by woods, which were thickly covered by frost in the morning. It started to snow gently. The gorgeous views over the fields below were hidden in fog.

The path tracks slowly down through the edge of the woods, down Watlington Hill, until emerging at the road. The woods were sparkling in the frost and though busy with walkers the closing in of the fog seemed to emphasise its loneliness.

It is a short way along the modern road to a more ancient one: the Icknield Way (which features in many walks in the Chilterns and was a memorable part of the Hertfordshire Border Walk). It is an ancient way, walked by Stone Age men and all the ages which followed. Now it is a broad, chalky path, running along the lower slope of the scarp. (A sign at one point specified the vehicles permitted to use it, which does not allow anything with a motor, but a horse-drawn carriage was depicted as a permitted conveyance.)

Crossing the Icknield Way is the Oxfordshire Way, and we turned up this to climb the scarp again. It started as a tarmacked path, quite as wide as a lane but serving just one farm, then beyond it a more conventional path entering the woods. then crossing a field to emerge at Christmas Common, and a short walk back to the car park. It was three and a half miles all told – a good family welly walk. It must be revisited too when we can see the views.

Maps

Route map