June 16, 1997: Nuffield to Stokenchurch
Parsons’ route joins the ancient Icknield Way on this stretch.
Because we wished to have one last conditioning hike before our week-long annual trek on the Southwest Peninsula Coast Path, the Lees and I decided to complete the last stretch of the Chilterns Hundred route today. To do so meant that Tosh and I were playing a little hooky – for we used a Monday of exam week, when we were not required to be on campus anyway, to duck in the last thirteen miles of Jimmy Parson’s circular tromp through the Chilterns.
While Dorothy was in the park with the dog I snuck away guiltily from the house at 8:20. In Paddington station I bought a one-way ticket to Henley and a small cappuccino. The 9:08 train was only two minutes late leaving; its first stop was at Ealing Broadway, where I expected to see the Lees climb aboard. I had to take it on faith that they had done so – until Twyford, when I spotted them as we all switched trains over to the little branch line where our Henley train was already waiting. Talbot Taxis had no car available when we arrived at 10:03 but the next-door outfit did, and we were soon whizzing northwest again, through remembered Nettlebed and up to the car park of the Crown Inn in Nuffield. It was 10:25 when we started our walk – exactly the same time we had left Skirmett on May 25.
We were taking a chance on the weather, since showers had been predicted, and we were carrying full raingear. It was grey and humid as we walked on the verge down Gangsdown Hill, heading northwest – almost opposite, for the first few miles, from the direction that would dominate our walk today, east. We were able to escape the highway soon enough, using the trackway of the Old London Road to pass through some rural squalor and to continue on a fairly level surface through open wheat fields, surrounded by displays of red poppies and other wildflowers. Tosh began digging up specimens and I was tempted too, though I decided to wait until the end of the trip to get a sample of one of these wildflowers for my window boxes – but I never saw the plant again.
After a mile and a half, with lovely views of Oxfordshire in front of us, we turned off at the first of many piggy smells, at Potters Farm. Giant haystacks, several stories high, stood on our left as we peeked through some hedgerows – trying to find the continuation of the route. We used a bridleway to make additional progress, still in a northwesterly direction, but this was surrounded by scrub and – as the hills rose on either side of us – views became more restricted. We encountered a dead rabbit and a dead bird. “This is murderer’s row,” I suggested. A man with a pair of binoculars was studying the poppy field to the east.
We reached Cow Common (true to its name today) and climbed one flank to find a stile in a hedgerow. A young critter was bellowing down at his friends from the road that we now reached by climbing the stile – and he decided to follow us as we headed toward Ewelme on tarmac. This amused a couple who were heading up the road toward us. “Is that your cow?” they inquired. “We were hoping she’d follow you back in the other direction,” I replied. In fact, after a moment’s hesitation, the cow decided it still liked us best of all and continued to trot along behind us, to the amusement of the local motorists, until we reached the recreation ground of the village, where it scampered down to a fence where the rest of the herd was corralled. There were cries of mutual bovine recognition as we continued cowless into the village, past the school, and up a steep lane to the church, St. Mary’s. The church was open and we entered it and had a look round, passing through to the other side of the church grounds. The guidebook said that we were to pass through the churchyard, but this extra adventure across the nave lead to some ambiguity when we reached the road above the church and began looking for a way forward. The Lees found a signposted path, as advertised, and we headed out on a comfortable track, but I saw no sign of the iron railings mentioned in Parsons and after a few hundred yards I became suspicious enough to have a look at my compass. We were supposed to be heading north here – and instead we were heading due east!
So I ordered a retreat and we returned to the road above the church where I found a path heading north (no signpost), keeping along the iron railings of the graveyard. We had soon righted ourselves in order to climb several stiles. I had a feeling that some things had changed hereabouts since the guidebook had been written. For one thing, the field we were supposed to cross diagonally had been turned into a condominium – for pigs. We followed a track along the western boundary of this colony, where dozens of pigs and hundred of contented piglets were sleeping and supping next to little iron sheds. An electric wire was all that separated the sows from the road; the piglets could easily have crossed beneath this barrier but the farmer was here relying on separation anxiety to keep them from wandering. At the northern end of pig heaven a final stile put us out on a bridleway and, reversing our long westward march, we began to trek eastward toward the Chiltern escarpment a mile or so away. Oil seed rape grew on one side of the road, peas on another as we cleared Huntinglands Farm and approached the Upper Icknield Way. I had suggested that when we reached this turnoff we would look for a lunch spot and, indeed, there seemed to be a kind of picnic ground inside the trees on this corner.
It was 12:45. We had a nice leisurely lunch and one of our rare rests for the day. A number of people pulled up in cars and let their dogs out to exercise. Wild strawberries were growing at our feet and pheasants were plentiful, indeed a pheasant hen was running up the Icknield Way as we decided it was time for us to move on. Harold stayed behind to have a last quiet pee – just as another woman drove up to exercise her dog.
We followed the ancient trackway for almost three miles and, as we did so, the sun broke through at last. There were some ominous dark patches off to the west, but we never encountered any of the threatened moisture and I was able to walk in my t-shirt throughout the day. In a few minutes the Ridgeway path came in from the right and for some time I found myself retracing footsteps I had made in 1982. When we reached Icknield House I noted that Tosh had just reached her 1400th mile – lately she had become mileage-obsessed, having decided that she must reach mile 2000 by the end of the year 2000. We did not go into Watlington, where I had once ended a walk, but continued forward on the Ridgeway past this town – as Tosh paused another time to dig up some ferns.
When the Oxfordshire Way came in from the west we turned east with it, climbing past a lumbering operation and wood yard at the end of a road, one that had been paved since the writing of the guidebook, and heading uphill at Pyrton Hill House (and a cottage I called Pyrton Hill House Junior). We made slow and steady progress as we ascended a trail –climbing to the plateau, where a tall antenna dominated. It was hot in the sun. When we had reached the top we continued forward toward Christmas Common along the Oxfordshire Way (there were dozens of local footpaths waymarked from this point on) and just before reaching the road we paused in the shade and had a lie down in the grass. I even took off my boots and let my warm feet breathe a bit of cool air.
After some fifteen minutes we resumed our walk; it was just past 3:00 and there didn’t seem to be any good reason for heading into Christmas Common to look for a pub, so we turned north at the road and after 120 yards turned off to pass the MOD fence around the antenna. I had long puzzled over the route description from this point, unable to find a precise corollary on the OS map, so I was determined to do a good job of following directions. Fortunately the route we needed was well waymarked with white directional arrows. After a few turns we neared the southern boundary of Blackmoor Woods and then began a long descent trough tall trees on a good path. Although the sun had disappeared and the lighting was dull there was no question that this was a truly magical place: a good, waymarked path ever descending in magisterial woodland. A large, anonymous animal crashed away on our left and squirrels darted about in front of us.
Eventually, as we neared the bottom of this course, I could discern on the map landmarks I was also able to see on the ground again, and this gave me confidence. Off to our left were the ornamental gate and high walls of the Wormsley Estate and a woman in a land rover, emerging from the stately pile, paused to have a close look at the intruders – perhaps puzzled (as was I) by just why Tosh was crumbling a dirt clod as she drove by. When we hopped a stile into a field full of sheep (the prescribed right of way) the driver, having convinced herself that we were not here as poachers or hunt saboteurs, drove on. A stile at the other side of the sheep field put us back on a road and from here we could see down to a small valley and up another very steep incline.
Soon we were inching up this hill, pausing every now and then to turn around for wonderful views to the west, or to gulp down some liquid. Just as I was starting to resume the march a giant cock pheasant exploded from the underbrush at my feet and flew off with a squawk – or was it my squawk? Woodland at the top of the ridge was soon succeeded by the grassy expanse of Ibstone Common and we took a half left to head for the road –where we could see buses leading a parade of whizzing traffic. On the other side of the road was the Fox pub but it was 5:00 and the pub didn’t open until 6:00. “We’ll find a pub at the end,” I offered by way of consolation.
We followed the road north and then turned off into some cottager’s driveway to find a gate in his back fence and access to Hartmoor Wood. Another very steep descent began over rough ground in a part of the woods that had been partially harvested. There were still white directional arrows about, but these petered out when we reached the bottom and it took me some time, with many compass readings and glances at the OS map, to determine that we needed to take a sharp left to climb a hill, with meadow on our right and the woods on our left. Soon we discovered a stile back into the woods and, heading north over a number of stiles, we gradually approached the desired Studridge Farm. I paused here to switch from the Reading and Windsor to the Aylesbury and Leighton Buzzard OS map and it was just as well that I did so because our turnoff wasn’t really marked on the ground and I needed to orient myself – using a copse I could see across a grassy field to the northwest.
Parsons says that immediately past this area a half left is required to reach some stiles; I would say it was a half right. We followed a hedgerow down to a slurry-dominated field bottom, and used another stile to descend through a small wood. A final climb put is onto a farm road from where we could see a tunnel under the M40 motorway, whose roar, like some mechanical cataract, we had been hearing for the last half hour. We climbed two last stiles to descend to this tunnel and, after using it, followed streets up and into the village of Stokenchurch.
We reached the green where, some months earlier, cabs had deposited the Lees, the Linicks, and the Haradas. In this fashion we had completed the tenth and last stage of the route. Parsons had planned a 100-mile circuit and, even though we had skipped the twice-walked Cookham to Marlow section, I noted that, with all our off-route exists and entrances, that we, too, had just finished our hundredth mile.
It was 5:52 and the Fleur de Lys pub was already open. “Smart and Appropriate” clothing was required here. “I feel I am neither,” I said to the Lees, but we were not turned away from this comfortable establishment and in a few minutes we were eating peanuts and sipping cold lager in celebration.
Tosh inquired about a cab back to High Wycombe and arrangements were soon made. I also called Dorothy with my E.T.A. There wasn’t even time for a second drink; I was just putting on my sweatshirt when a local lady with a large van pulled up and we began our return journey. It cost £12, including tip, to be deposited at the train station, where we bought our tickets. The 6:52 was running eight minutes late and this was just as well since it took us a long time to shuffle through the station, under the track, and up the other side. The Lees got off at West Ruislip and I traveled contentedly onward to Marylebone alone, arriving home at about 8:00.
A Chilterns Hundred had proven to be an excellent enterprise, through first class countryside, with plenty of route finding challenges to keep things interesting – and it was with some regret that I had to admit that this adventure was now over.
If you want a continuation of the route from Stokenchurch you need: