Category: Buckinghamshire

Buckinghamshire Way 1.2: A morning by the Thames

The Thames is a perfect companion in the height of summer, a cooling mirror between trees. I first met it on the National Trust’s Ankerwyke Meadows, which once belonged to an old priory, bare remains of which stand in the corner of a field.
The route this morning was mainly beside the river.

1:00 – Taplow.  2:15 – still in Taplow.

The Thames is a perfect companion in the height of summer, a cooling mirror between trees. I first met it on the meadows owned by the National Trust between Hythe End and Wraysbury; the Ankerwyke Meadows that accompany its ‘Magna Carta’ estate. These lands belonged to an old priory, bare remains of which stand in the corner of a field.

The route this morning was mainly beside the river, though there was some road-walking from Wraysbury and a path by the railway (that was far, far better than other railside footpaths I have waded through). Then at Datchet I took up with the Thames Path, and was with it all the way here.

I went astray in Eton (how many gentlemen can say that, eh Boris?) but was soon back on track. Eton really is as genteel as the sound it makes on the ear.  It is not just the Battle of Waterloo that was won on the playing fields of Eton: an empire was won here and governed wisely and well, for the most part.  (For the failures I blame lesser schools.)  They could have fitted the literal Battle of Waterloo on its fields – the Eton College Estate is massive. No wonder Old Etonians have a unique outlook on the world.

From here are broad meadows beside the river and the Thames Path all the way to Taplow, opposite Maidenhead.

North of Maidenhead is the Cliveden Estate, also now owned by the National Trust and it was looking unlikely that the promised path beside the river here is open, but the helpful staff at the Oak & Saw in Taplow village have told me of a new bridge not on the map, over the Jubilee River.  I can recommend the Oak & Saw judging by the Eton mess I am about to tuck into.

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Buckinghamshire Way 1.1: Start at Hythe End

7:20 am, Hythe End. This is a practical rather than a pretty place, between Staines behind me and the M25 viaduct ahead, but it is where a lovely county starts.  I am at the brook marking the border with Middlesex, looking westwards into Buckinghamshire. In a few hundred yards I will make my way to the meadows by the Thames, and have a morning by the river.

It struck me that I could turn this morning’s route into the beginning of a county border walk, but not today. Buckinghamshire is a long, thin county and an end-to-end walk is best suited to it.  I will be missing a lot, but there are other weekends and other routes for another time.

First then to the Thames, which marks the border with Surrey and then Berkshire. I will turn inland at Hedsor, beyond Clivedon, and head north through the heart of the shire and see how far I can get.

It is not a good time to remember that I have been out of training.  Let’s go.

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The Buckinghamshire Way – first walk this weekend

The Buckinghamshire Way has been a long time in contemplation, but I will finally be starting it on Saturday, 13 July 2019. The starting point will by Buckinghamshire’s south-easternmost point, in Hythe End. I will then walk down to the Thames and the National Trust’s Ankerwycke meadows, and follow upstream to Eton and to Clivedon before turning due north. The next day should see me through the Chilterns and on to Aylesbury.

Some of the route is on paths I know, while most is completely new – in any case, the Buckinghamshire Way is no more than a line on a map until it is actually walked.

The Buckinghamshire Way has been a long time in contemplation, but I will finally be starting it on Saturday, 13 July 2019.  The starting point will by Buckinghamshire’s south-easternmost point, in Hythe End west of Staines, at the county border on the Colne Brook close to the M25 viaduct.  I will then walk down to the Thames and the National Trust’s Ankerwycke meadows, and follow upstream to Eton and to Clivedon before turning due north for Beacconsfield, where the Chilterns begin, and beyond.

The next day should see me through the Chilterns and on to Aylesbury.

Some of the route is on paths I know, while most is completely new and it must be walked just to see that it can be walked, or if the route needs diversion. In any case, the “Buckinghamshire Way” is no more than a line on a map until it is actually walked.

I only have weekends, so it will have to be finished off after a fortnight’s gap, but the final aim is to touch Buckinghamshire’s northernmost point at Northey Farm, north of Olney. Then I get to go home.

However, rather than set the whole route out here, I will blog as I go.

Also:

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Maps and books

Ordnance Survey Explorer range (1:25 000):

Books

The Gerald Colton Way

The Gerald Colton Way looks an oddity, but there is a sharp logic to it. It runs from the South Bank Centre in Central London, out to the Buckinghamshire Chilterns, with loops and eccentricities on the way.
The route is 65 miles long, so do not expect to walk it in one weekend. It was devised in 1994 by Gerald Colton, a founder member and long-time Walks Organiser of the Hampstead Ramblers, to mark the first multi-racial elections in South Africa that year. He named it the ‘Mandela Way’ and it ran from a statue of Nelson Mandela by the Royal Festival Hall, out to the Boer War monument on Combe Hill in Buckinghamshire. It has no other connection with South Africa though and so after Mr Colton’s death the next year, the Hampstead Ramblers renamed his route in honour of its inventor.

The Gerald Colton Way looks an oddity, but there is a sharp logic to it.  It runs from the South Bank Centre in Central London, out to the Buckinghamshire Chilterns, with loops and eccentricities on the way.

The route is 65 miles long, so do not expect to walk it in one weekend.  It was devised in 1994 by Gerald Colton, a founder member and long-time Walks Organiser of the Hampstead Ramblers, to mark the first multi-racial elections in South Africa that year. He named it the ‘Mandela Way’ and it ran from a statue of Nelson Mandela by the Royal Festival Hall, out to the Boer War monument on Combe Hill in Buckinghamshire.  It has no other connection with South Africa though and so after Mr Colton’s death the next year, the Hampstead Ramblers renamed his route in honour of its inventor.

Since the 1990s, the route has become mostly forgotten, which is a pity because it is eminently walkable in sections – the path is devised so as to pass railway stations allowing sections to be walked as day walks, and some of these are very interesting.  It also achieve the feat of finding a largely green route all the way through and out of the metropolitan conurbation.

Hungerford-Bridge, at the route’s begininng

The route on its winding course passes through four counties, beginning on the Surrey bank of the Thames before crossing to Middlesex. It crosses almost due north all through Middlesex, then looping through Hertfordshire and Middlesex again before climbing through the Chess Valley into Buckinghamshire and following the Misbourne Valley through the Chilterns.

The Gerald Colton Way provided, if not a natural waking route, a series of pleasant walks to make into a personal project.

(Thanks to the Hampstead Ramblers for information on the route.)

Maps:

In the Explorer, 1:50 000 series:

Route map

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The Chess Valley Walk

A glorious February day for a walk, and so I walked the Chess Valley Walk with my daughter; eleven miles from Chesham in Buckinghamshire to Rickmansworth in Hertfordshire, all along the River Chess.

The river, the constant companion along the way, grows from what is little more than a muddy puddle in Chesham into a shining waterway – never more than inches deep, nevertheless it has carves a deep, verdant valley.  It is a lovely walk, and as we met many walkers on the way, others appear to agree with this.  At just 11 miles, it is to be enjoyed at leisure.

From Chesham Station we headed first along a straight path wrought beside the railway line before descending to the town, and here I must observe that the signs and Ordnance Survey maps disagree on where the walk goes, so we followed the signs for the pleasanter route – further on we found even two maps disagreeing and that the promoters of the path have moved it, for the better.  Soon after emerging from Chesham there are some short sub-industrial stretches, but that is the reality of a working countryside, before we crossed the river and followed through the grazed fields of the farms which are the greatest stretch of the walk.

First then by the woods towards Latimer House.  It is here that the Chess pulls its greatest trick – becoming a broad river which in the sunshine glinted like a lake, which actually is what it is – in a past age the Estate half-dammed the river with a weir to create an ornamental lake.  The great house has now become a hotel, but the ornament remains.

Past Latimer and we were into Hertfordshire.  First stop:  an intriguing enclosure which was the site of mediaeval Flaunden before it moved up the hill.  Nothing visible remains.  Soon after that, we were on part of the first-day route of my ‘Herts Embraced‘ walk, all past Sarratt Bottom and to a pool of the river below the Chorleywood House Estate (many dogs playing in the pool here, then sniffing for our picnic food).

On the Chess Valley Way

On then across the M25 at Solesbridge Lane and through the back of Loudwater and back to familiar territory, in Rickmansworth.

The station at each end has an information board about the route and things to see (I could not seen any sign of water voles not white-tailed crayfish in the river, but will take that on trust).  In the end though, it is a walk to be enjoyed for itself.

Page on the walk with map

Maps

The route might be done with standard Landranger maps, though the additional detail of an Explorer map is very helpful.

In the Explorer, 1:50 000 series:

New Year’s Day – Little Missenden

New Year’s Day, and we greeted the year with a walk in the Misbourne Valley, from Little Missenden.  It is a lovely village, barely touched by modernity, but in a good way, with two pubs, an ancient church, farms on all sides, and a network of footpaths. We set off on a loop south from the village.  I have included maps of the walks here on the page “Little Missenden Walks“.

The village is south of the unforgiving track of the trunk road (the A413), leaving it in happy isolation.  We set off east along the village’s one road and up a farm track which is also part of the South Bucks Way. This leads by a meadow beside the River Misbourne until a kissing gate and, turning south, the delightfully named Mop End Lane, a footpath, once a byway, leading south up out of the valley to the equally charmingly named hamlet of Mop End, which is one farm and no more.

The sun came out and the views down to the valley were wonderful.  It began raining gently after Mop End Farm, but briefly.

Turning west from the farm, we followed a path at a hedge line to a kissing gate (recently replacing a stile) where the hedge doglegs, and through to another tree-edged lane, named Toby’s Lane.  At this point we chose to take Toby’s Lane north, between high hedges of trees.  On this route, there is, after Breaches Wood, a path diagonally across the field north-westward down to the valley floor and back to Little Missenden, emerging almost opposite the church.

The longer walk looks like a much wider loop, but adds only a mile to the walk; it passes by Toby’s Lane, crosses Beamond End Lane and continues to Holmer Green.

Helpful Signpost, Little Missenden

Through Holmer Green, and a bridleway leads north, into Coleman’s Wood / Haleacre Wood, then down sharply into the Misbourne Valley, with, just above the river, a cut-across path to the edge of the village.

Little Missenden itself is a pleasant place, catering well for walkers.  The parish church is an Anglo-Saxon building, possibly tenth century, but extended in the Middle Ages leaving odd glimpses of the original work.  Most eye-opening though are the mediaeval wall paintings, whitewashed over at the Reformation and uncovered in the modern age.

Maps

In the Explorer, 1:50 000 series:

Walking Christmas off around Chequers

It needs a good walk to break out of  turkey-induced lethargy, and so this last week we headed out to the Chilterns and dropped in on the Prime Minister – well not quite, but we took in a good path around her country residence, Chequers.

The path we chose, written up on this site as ‘Ellesborough and Chequers‘, starts at the vast church in the tiny village of Ellesborough, at the edge of the Chilterns and really at the heart of Buckinghamshire’s prime walking country.  The paths here lead south over the fields to Coombe Hill, then around the south edge of the Chequers estate.  It is odd that though this a secured area, bristling with cameras, there is a public path straight through and this we took.

Frequent readers may know that I previously wrote up a route hereabouts called the Resignation Way; a walk that a minister might take if he resigns during a visit here and has to find a station having lost his ministerial car.  It is a good walk, and almost worth timing the resignation just to get a good Chiltern walk in.  Much of our route was, by coincidence, on the Resignation Way.

The path is a mixture of landscapes to be enjoyed –  fields, woods, hills, and open meadow.  From parts of the walk, particularly in Maple Wood, there are good views of the Prime Minister’s residence, and it is a popular route – much of it uses The Ridgeway, a long-distance path very well defined.

Turning off the Ridgeway, going north and into Little Kimble Warren, there is an unexpected view:  a sudden, deep, heavily wooded valley, named Happy Valley, with a view opening out to Great Kimble’s parish church and the Vale of Aylesbury beyond; the path crosses the head of the valley.  Thereafter it open onto a chalk down beyond which Ellesborough’s church comes again into view, topping off a fine morning.

There is much to see around here also; the monument of Coombe Hill which is visible from much of the walk, the ancient church at Little Kimble, the little Iron Age fort known as Cymbeline’s Castle, an abandoned mediaeval village, and the anticipation of possibilities in the network of paths which meet here.  They are for another time.

Iver loop – a quiet bank holiday walk

Iver and its fields formed a break from embracing Hertfordshire this weekend.  A long weekend – three days could let me finish the top of the county and get all the way down the east side, but after all there is such a thing as family, and family time is very important.

So, we all walked a four-and-a-half mile loop from and to Iver, in southern Buckinghamshire, not far from home.  It is a pleasant part of a county I have always regarded as a walkers’ favourite.  The route is close to the swelling conurbation and never far from the sounds and smells of it, but a green way through the fields and woods shows the treasures of the land are still shining so close to concrete utility.

The route runs north from the middle of the village soon disappearing among fields and curling east to cross the Colne Brook, where some lovely homes appear, then over the M25 before turning south.

The route follows south along the River Colne, which forms the county border.  This was almost familiar:  I realised that I had walked the other side of the river on Day 1 of the Middlesex Greenway, and then it crosses the river into Middlesex at the south end of Little Britain Lake and for a short distance does indeed follow the Middlesex Greenway, until the Grand Union Canal Slough Arm.

By the canal bridge stands a tall concrete coal post,; a Victorian tax marker which marks the Buckinghamshire-Middlesex border.  The route then follows west along the canal, under the motorway again, and above the canal loom the untidy buildings of an industrial estate: it is a reminder that the canal was built for industry, though it has been claimed by nature.  Despite ancestral connections to what was once a small village serving the coaching trade, I saw no reason to continue to what Slough has become, and so we crossed the Slough Arm and worked around the edge of the industrial estate and struck out north, back to Iver.

Gate from Iver Lane

There is an interesting church at Iver which I would have liked to explore inside, were it not locked:  it looks completely late-Gothic on the outside (with modern restorations) but the guidebooks say that it contains Norman and Anglo-Saxon elements.  A stone coffin incongruously chained upright to the wall (empty, I should say) seemed to be of this earliest age.

The route we chose is not on the Buckinghamshire Way nor any other grand route I had planned, but runs through a gentle part of Buckinghamshire.  There is more to be found, and I will go out and find it, perhaps after I have finished my border walk.

The route

Maps

In the Explorer, 1:50 000 series:

In the Landranger, 1:25 000 series:

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.

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

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