Author: RB

From Henley via Uxbridge to Downing Street

How best to get from Henley-on-Thames by way of Uxbridge to 10 Downing Street in Westminster?  It is a route of 48 miles that is a mixture of town and country, an antidote to the rushed commute, and one that has history behind it.

Robert Walpole, the very first Prime Minister, was an active walker and he walked this route (if a distant memory of a long-forgotten lesson serves).  It is said that Walpole would frequently set off on foot from London and walk to Oxford.  That was an achieving man. The route marked on our map is close to that which Walpole must have taken from Oxfordshire to the heart of government in Westminster; or he might have gone through the middle of Uxbridge, where the Oxford road runs, so our route goes by Uxbridge.

I have written before in praise of walking the suburban wild places, so let us mix town and country in a single walk.  It takes in the countryside of southern Buckinghamshire, and the increasingly suburbanised villages, then the metropolis, but here it Is possible to follow a string of parks to Downing Street itself.  It takes an appreciation of Shakespeare to find the poetry which is found in many of these places, and the route named after the Bard provides much of the route, though in the end, you have to find your own way to Downing Street.

If it is possible to go from Henley to 10 Downing Street, perhaps by way of Uxbridge, following the footsteps of the first Prime Minister, then this is an honest way to do it, on foot.

Whatever happened to the Berkshire Way?

Several years ago there appeared on the BBC’s local pages for Berkshire a series of 14 articles on walks all around Berkshire, which could be put together to form a proposed ‘Berkshire Way’. No more has been heard since.  Maybe it is time to revive this.

I have added a new Berkshire Way project page to WildþingUK: have a look and see what you think.  I have walked some of the paths but nothing like enough to judge the route from experience.

The route is an eccentric one, apparently because it is designed as a series of relatively short half-day walks rather than a logical whole, and as such it loops wildly and bends back on itself as it finds new, interesting places to go.  Seen in that way, it makes more sense – it is a way to see the highlights of the county, although in a county of so many beauties there will be plenty of highlights omitted.

The first published version has a major failing in that it misses a major part of Berkshire altogether, namely the north of the county all amongst the Berkshire Downs and Vale of White Horse.  Therefore our project fixes this, adding a new first stage from the St John’s Bridge near Lechlade, on Berkshire’s short border with Gloucestershire, to Lambourn by way of the Ridgeway and the White Horse of Uffington.  There is far more to be seen in the north of the county, not least in the greensward valleys leading down to the ancient county town, Abingdon, but we cannot see everything.

From Lambourn the route runs south to the highest point in the county, on Walbury Hill, then back across its waist, through the rich farmland in of western Berkshire.  It takes in the main towns; first Newbury then back up to the Ridgeway and along the county’s northern border, the Thames, to Reading.  The forests of eastern Berkshire are the next to be discovered. The finishing point is at Queen Victoria’s statute in Windsor.

It is an ambitious route but it provides a variety of experience truly to soak in nature of Berkshire as a whole.

Map

(On the Project page)

Links

 

Preparing for the Hertfordshire Border Walk

In August, I will begin to walk the Hertfordshire Border Walk; a walk all around the borders of the county. It consists of a series of linked paths which together form a ring about the county and, following the WildþingUK philosophy, it follows strictly the border of the traditional county, a shire over a thousand years old, not a transient administrative area that borrows its name.  This then is a path to embrace the county, not to find the edge of bureaucratic interference.

The first question is “Boots v Bike“. The first planned stretches are largely on bridleways which can be explored on a bicycle.  Where the path narrows to a path, I would have to wheel the bike:  inconvenient, but not as bad as once carrying it over my shoulder as I edged along a Cornish cliff above the rolling Atlantic.  A bicycle can carry more miles, and all under my own steam, but is it cheating?  That is to be worked out in the coming weeks.

Of the paths and bridleways used to form the route, many of these are lesser-known tracks leading to parts of the county largely unseen; others are footpaths between villages; others may be broader tracks striding a long distance across the shire. All folk of this shire then are cordially urged to come out and to find those edgy parts of our county, parts at the fringe, which you might not know, or if you do know them then come anyway.

In parts, Hertfordshire’s border line is jagged, and in the north among the Chilterns in particular there are deep spurs and hooks of Hertfordshire, Buckinghamshire and Bedfordshire winding round each other, so for the sake of sanity the path must on occasion cut across half a mile or so of a neighbour, but these are kept to a minimum.

However it is drawn together, this is a long route, which would take a couple of weeks to walk in total. I will blitz the first few days (before job and duty call me back) and then finish the rest over separate weekends.

Until the walk is walked, it is no more than a line on a map, and therefore it must be walked.

As before, I will invite donations to the Stroke Association, and will attempt to record my walk as I go on WildþingUK. Wish me luck.

Links

Please donate to the Stroke Association: Please donate to the Stroke Association: click here..

The Resignation Way: a path from Chequers to private life

A glorious way to end what seemed a promising political career – a walk out through the Chilterns at their best before descending to everyday life.  A ministers who resigned this weekend would have to have walked back from Chequers – and none took the opportunity.  To give up a good morning’s walk for a political career – that is dedication.

So why not make a walk of it?

Therefore, I am launching ‘The Resignation Way‘ – a walking route to and from the Chequers Estate. It follows the routes which a cabinet minister hurled out of the back door., with his ministerial car confiscated, may take to reach his train.

There are two stations close to Chequers: Little Kimble to the west and Wendover to the east.  The route shows how these are best reached from Chequers.  Alternatively, for those of us outside those hallowed circles, it provides a route between the two stations past Chequers.  The house is a fine country house set in an idyllic spot on the Chiltern escarpment.  It was given to the nation by Sir Arthur and Lady Lee as a Prime Ministerial residence – in the hope that each future Prime Minister would have an appreciation for the needs of the countryside as well as the town.  They could hardly have picked a better spot.

The route of the Resignation Way takes in some existing, popular ways and parts of established long-distance paths including the Ridgeway and the proposed route of the Buckinghamshire Way.

Route map

The Resignation Way (with the route for the rest of us in purple)

Maps

Main article:

Congratulations to last weekend’s DofE teams!

Congratulation to all the teams of youngsters who have completed their expeditions for the Duke of Edinburgh’s Award this weekend in the scorching heat: it’s a fine achievement.  Good luck too to those teams about to set off.

(All the usual advice goes with that:  get some rest, keep cool, drink lots of water, eat crisps.  Crisps? Definitely: the salt helps the body to absorb water.)

Trostan – now how did I miss that one?

It was many years ago.  I was tired and still soaking wet from the best storm that Antrim could render.  I sat on a hillside and admitted to my walking companion that this was a tough walk largely because I had glossed over inconvenient bits in the planning.  Still, I can look back at days of 12 hours’ or 13 hours’ walking a day in the hills as an achievement.  What I did not notice is that the hill in question was Trostan, the highest hill in County Antrim, and passing over its shoulder I missed by a hundred yards or so the opportunity to top it.

The walk had began being dropped off at the spectacle that is the Sallagh Braes, then over the thistle-clad hill tops northward, ultimately to reach the Giant's Causeway four days later.

It was raining in Carnlough and dull –  though I have since been there in glorious sunshine and realise what I missed.  Maybe Carnlough and the walk over the top to Glenariff are for another post.  The next morning from the top of that wonderful glen we followed up a track on the Moyle Way, high above the glen, by this time soaked to the skin and begging internally for a better day than the last.  There was a hill, a fine hill, a hill that seemed to know its place in the landscape – Trostan.  The path led up and over the shoulder of the hill, close to the summit but not to it. By this time, realising my timings were completely out, it was just a question of putting one foot in front of another and bashing through the day, with no thought to exploration or taking pictures or tapping the top of a trig pillar, and so we went on.

It was later when compiling a list of county tops, I realised that Trostan is the highest hill of  the Antrim Hills and the county top of County Antrim – and I had missed it.  In my defence, I was not at that time interested in county tops, and had no thought to dashing round topping as many as possible as I have done since, but it itches at the back of my head that I missed a county top I could have bagged, had I but known.

When I was back in Antrim a few years ago we drove along the coast road and as we came near, my eyes involuntarily started plotting routes, but we had a B&B booked and the walking boots were deep in the packing, and it passed us by.  I only did two county tops that holiday (Down and Armagh). I can at least note Trostan as “nearly done”, and look for an opportunity when next passing to hare up to the summit and bash that trig point.

Map

Beset by harsh beauty; Crianlarich

The mountains might almost sweep over it without noticing, this tiny place in a glen, dwarfed to insignificance by the mountains, but I keep coming back to it, in spirit as much as in body. Crianlarich; at the meeting of ways in the Highlands. ‘Place o’ the wee ruin’ it means and maybe it was once no more than a shattered bothy, but today the village stands as neat as can be in a gash through the forbidding Perthshire mountains, where Strath Fillan, Glen Falloch and Glen Dochart meet, and with them the roads and railway that they carry.  Eventually, everyone comes to Crianlarich, if they care for the hills.

A clutch of houses, a kirk, a hotel, a shop and a youth hostel strung along a road, and the station that fills them. The profusion of signposts pointing to this place belie its tininess.  You do not come to Crianlarich for the village though but because it is the meeting of roads going elsewhere or because of the hills amongst which it hides.

The last time we were in Crianlarich was on the way from Stirling to Oban. The afternoon was drawing in towards evening (which is a long, slow process here). We grabbed a scratch picnic from the village shop (possibly the best stocked village shop I have ever seen outside Ulster), stocked up with Smidge, and followed a path up to see what we could see above the village.

The village soon vanishes in its landscape. The glen is broad enough, but the village is just clinging to the side of a mountain and would barely be noticed if it were to disappear within.  All among the blooming heather, Perthshire reveals itself and all curtaining the southern view were the Crianlarich Hills; mighty fells of which seven are Munros, over 3,000 feet in height, the mightiest being Ben More at 3,852 feet.

My feet began to itch. My eyes flicked involuntarily to the OS map and the vista to choose routes, until reminded gently that I had a family in tow and a B&B booked in Lorne. There would be time for that later.

The Buckinghamshire Way: first steps

I set off by the Thames at the southernmost end of Buckinghamshire, looking north to a route up the whole length of the county. I estimated ninety miles, if the planned route is practical, and that is what I am finding out.

I have advocated the creation of a Buckinghamshire Way and have a project page for it here.   I tentatively plotted a route, but while I am familiar with much of the middle section, the ends were based on conjecture.  I found yesterday, for example, that the actual southernmost tip of the county is private land and inaccessible (so those few hundred yards will be scrubbed from the route map).  Near enough though a public path runs for a short way along a gorgeous stretch of the Thames, which forms Buckinghamshire’s southern border – as stretch spoiled only by the vast M25 viaduct in the middle, but at least it provides an access to a short portion of the riverbank.  ideally I would have walked upstream a few yards to a path beside the meadows and the Colne Brook, but the way here is cruelly blocked by a water treatment site.

Thames

(A start point for the route could be in across the river on the Thames Path in Egham. A cartographer has pointed out to me that the river has been altered here and that the original course was slightly further south, so that Buckinghamshire has a claim to own a small portion on what is now the south bank.)

Emerging in Hythe End, I headed along the road a little and then up a wooded path between a lake in an old gravel pit and the diverted course of the Colne Brook; a pleasant wander in the summer with glinting water beside me. However after crossing the railway (a stile to a foot crossing with no warning signals) the linking path runs in the tight gap between high fences, between the railway and the Wraysbury Reservoir and this is, if not impassable, deeply unpleasant:  the whole width is filled with neck-high stinging nettles and briars.  It is not a path down which I would lead the family during a happy morning’s stroll.

This being so, a new track is needed for the opening section of the Buckinghamshire Way.

A walk sticking to the river all the way is not practical here: houses run down to the riverbank.  However there is a permissive path (I always worry about what goes on down a path that is announced as ‘permissive’) which appears to run down to the river around the National Trust’s land here, which is a longer path than following the road, but avoids too much asphalt.  I was unable to explore it this time but will do so on another occasion.

The projected route has a mile or so unavoidably on the road up to Datchet, but when it finally reaches Datchet, it comes into its own, following footpaths through the fields to Eton. From there, the well-established Thames Path follows all the way to Taplow, opposite Maidenhead, then there is a public towpath north to Hedsor, where it meets a spur of the Chiltern Way going north.  This is for later though.

Until there are boots on the ground, ‘The Buckinghamshire Way’ is no more than an idea. The first steps have now been made though. Let’s get it properly established.

Real Lancashire Boundary Walk: lengthing the Mersey

Philip Walsh’s Real Lancashire Boundary Walk continues apace.  On 30 May , Philip set off from Blackpool and was in Liverpool, Lancashire’s Queen of the Seas, on 2 June.  Since then it has been the long haul up the River Mersey.

On 3 June, Philip reached the southernmost village in Lancashire; Hale.  Tonight he was able to sit in a pub in Shaw.  One week and the Mersey conquered.

Soon comes the heavy yomping as the county border runs through the Pennines.  We’re with you all the way, Philip.

Real Lancashire Boundary Walk begins: ‘Let’s Do It’

On Wednesday, 30 May, the Real Lancashire Boundary Walk began.  Philip Walsh set off from Blackpool seafront, beneath Blackpool Tower.  He tweeted his start, with the Lancashire County Flag standing on the Comedy Carpet by Victoria Wood’s  ‘Let’s Do It!’  (It’s just as well the camera did not draw back to the line about the Woman’s Weekly…  Here began a 417-mile walk around the whole Lancashire border.

The first day was the long trudge south along the flat Fylde coast and up the long reach of the Ribble to Preston and down again.  Day 2 took him to the next holiday town – Southport – and through to Crosby.  The next step, on Friday, is to Lancashire’s mighty port city – Liverpool.

Good luck, Philip.  We’re with you all the way.