May 29, 1994: Princes Risborough To Wendover

The Lees at Hampden Bottom

The first thing I noticed when Dorothy, Toby and I arrived at Marylebone Station at 8:15 on the morning of Sunday, May 29th, was that train service had been suspended between Aylesbury and Amersham, thereby throwing into doubt our return timetable. Since Tosh and Harold, already arrived, wanted to be back in London for a dinner engagement, I spent much of the rest of the day wondering what complications British Rail (or its privatized local successors) had in store for us. For the moment there was nothing to do but buy returns to Aylesbury, purchase coffee and a cruller (yes, this time they had bothered to open the station on a Sunday) and hope for the best.

Our train left at 8:36. It failed to stop at two of its designated destinations, but this didn’t seem to discomfit any of the passengers. We drank our coffee and Dorothy fitted Toby into his purple harness. There was plenty of ASL gossip to keep us amused and horrified, and Dorothy, who had been doing a good deal of substituting of late, was just as eager to join in this gab fest as Tosh and I. (Harold was a good sport as usual.) As we passed through Wycombe, which had won a spot in the second division at Wembley the day before, I reminded the others that this is where we had gotten off the train at the outset of Toby’s very first walk, eight and a half years earlier. Soon we had passed the golden dome of the church above West Wycombe, where he had first tasted the delights of country freedom.

When we got off the train I also reminded Dorothy that I had last been accompanied to Princes Risborough by Tony Babarik, way back in 1981, when I had been hiking on the Ridgeway. Indeed, our route this morning would ask us to retrace just a few steps of this long distance path. Of course today’s route should not have been our third outing on the Chilterns Hundred but the proper post-Cookham stage, which I proposed to renew at Marlow anyway, seemed perhaps to require a longer expedition – so I had looked for a later stage, one that would give our legs a few ups and downs as we prepared for another five day expedition on the South West Coast Path. I paused now, on the steps of an office, to adjust my maps and the guidebook in its plastic sleeve. It was obvious that the weather was much better than the forecasts had predicted. It was sunny, the skies were clear, and it was soon warm enough to take off my sweatshirt. We had picked another delightful day for our second Bank Holiday Sunday walk of the month. We began walking about 9:30.

We wandered though the streets at the southern end of the town, passed the Black Prince Hotel, and turned south on the A4010. Toby was then let loose to rub noses with quite a few other dogs being walked on the Upper Icknield Way, which I also recognized as a stretch of the Ridgeway path. We strolled uphill on a gentle incline, looking for a stile in a hedge. When we found it we turned south to cross fields as we descended to a small grove of trees hiding Pyrtle Spring. An uphill stretch put us over another stile – where Toby was briefly reigned in because of the proximity of cows. He didn’t notice them. Then we continued forward, heading to the right of a house called Wardrobes – there were some lovely trees in its grounds. We crossed the access drive and turned left to climb over a stile in a hedge, one of dozens of these objects encountered today. Inevitably Toby found a way under them – except for a few stiles that had chicken wire preventing such ingress. The other walkers were already complaining about hunger so after only an hour or so they flopped down on coats and weatherproofs in the wet grass and had a snack. I disdained this posture and ate my green onion and yogurt chips standing up.

We continued forward to the junction of Wardrobes Lane and Woodway and proceeded uphill, dodging Sunday traffic and inching our way past a number of interesting cottages. At the top of the hill we reached Loosely Row. Tosh wanted to go into the Whip Inn for coffee but it wasn’t even 11:00 yet. A stile in a hedge next to the bus shelter gave us access to a series of fields as we switched from a southerly to an easterly direction. Opposite our first field was the Lacey Green Windmill, which had been restored by the Chiltern Society. In the next field there was a large herd of cows, including some lovely new arrivals – all curious to get closer to the extremely nervous dog, who was being lead forward by Harold. Two fields later Toby rushed through a stile in a hedgerow and gave a startled bark. Tosh and Dorothy followed quickly to see what he was up to and found the dog staring quizzically into the eyes of a huge pig, who was munching peacefully with his mates at the top of the field. Toby did not hesitate in rejoining our party but he had to be reigned in as we passed some horses, one of whom turned his back to us and leaned up against his fence as though he were about to shit on us from a great height.

On several occasions the way forward, often marked with white arrows, failed to correspond with directions in the guidebook, but we discovered the muddy bridleway leading down to Lily Bank farm without too much difficulty and emerged onto a metaled lane. Our turnoff came after only a few paces, but we failed to discover the first of a set of double public footpath signs and stood about in more mud before determining that we now had to enter a woodland path past Coppice House. The route was a wonderful forest track that eventually crossed the access road to the house and continued forward (at least I thought it did) to a road. I was much relieved when the obvious continuation appeared only a few yards to the south and we were able to continue our woodland idyll through Keepersfield Wood. When we emerged onto another road, opposite Ferns Farm, we were only about 600 yards from the Hampden Arms Inn at Great Hampden. It had just turned 12:00 and we had decided to forego the sandwiches in our knapsacks in favor of some pub grub.

All the inside tables were booked but there were plenty of picnic tables in the manicured garden. I tied Toby to a tree while the rest of the party went in to order food and drinks. I fixed the dog his hardboiled egg and gave his some water. We were in a sunny spot, but it wasn’t too warm and there were more clouds in the sky. I had a pint of lager and ordered scampi and chips. So did Harold, who seemed to be listing to port as he walked back from the bar – but the girls asked for ploughmans. The bar staff brought our food out to a little well house in the garden and rang a bell, but we were too dumb to realize that we were being summoned and they had to ring a second time before we ventured forward to pick up our silverware and our tartar sauce and ketchup. Tosh complained that her stilton was too cold and that everything was overpriced. It’s true that two drinks and two lunches had cost the better part of £15; so much for life in the home counties. The garden filled up with other customers, including several dogs. One couple had a young black Labrador who evidently liked to climb into everyone’s bath, not just his own.

It had grown a bit cooler and I put my light blue UCLA sweatshirt back on. We left shortly before 1:00 and passed between hedgerows beneath the gorgeous red leaves of a copper beech and soon reached Hampden Church. Hampden House, across the street, seemed to be a conference center of some sort. There were some interesting buildings which we peeked into, parking areas, floodlights, but we never saw the tennis courts which were supposed to guide us to a path that descended on a muddy woodland ride down to a road in Hampden Bottom.

The guidebook called for us to cross over this road and follow a clear path for 600 yards until the latter emerged from the trees and bore left. Dorothy nominated a spot, but I claimed that our path continued straight ahead and that we were still in woodland. We continued forward therefore but soon I began to have my doubts. The path did eventually emerge from the trees, but it seemed to end on a hillside, where we encountered two other walkers having a rest. I assumed at first that we had missed a turnoff and was deciding how best to descend to the road at Little Hampton when it occurred to me to have a look at my compass. After a recent fiasco on the Weald Way, when we ended up heading in a direction opposite from where we wanted to go, I had grown more conservative ­– if less instinctive in my route finding. Sure enough, my compass proved that if we had descended to the road below we would have been heading west rather than the east we wanted! There was nothing to do but retrace our steps to Dorothy’s turnoff. This adventure added about half a mile to the original ten we were to have walked today, but it was, fortunately, in fairly level hilltop woodland.

When we returned to our turnoff I could see what had happened. The left turn we had been looking for did appear on the ground to be more forward than left – especially as there was a track here heading sharp left. And the growth of trees had made it harder to justify this an open space. But a right turn, which is what we were asked to do, did produce a path up to a skyline woods and so we decided to press forward on it ­– at least it was heading east. There were lots of other walkers about but there was no sense in following any of them ­– they seemed to be walking in circles. I can’t say that all of the features on the ground corresponded to the guidebook instructions but at least we were heading in the right direction and soon there was enough confirmation to assure me that we were back on route. The final bit of evidence was a sighting of the Rising Sun pub at Little Hampden.

The girls went in to order half a bitter (for Tosh) and four coffees. They were chided for having muddy boots and in other ways made to feel unwelcome among the country yuppies who were braying at nearby picnic tables in front of the pub. We didn’t linger long, hoping to make the 4:48 from Wendover and we were soon heading downhill into a valley. This was a hazardous path, with nettles on either side of a greasy track. Dorothy fell once (I grabbed her just before she hit the mud) but she came away with nettle welts that took several hours to recede. She took the misadventure in good spirit, especially for one who – just four weeks earlier – had sworn off hiking for life after another fall.

We turned north and proceeded on tracks and trails for some distance. Toby, who had been running furiously between the front and the rear of his party, now froze into tense immobility at some sound at the field margins on our left. The next we knew he had leapt into action, having flushed a large pheasant that he chased for some distance before it became airborne. He was very proud of himself and kept looking for more prey as we reached the stables south of Dunsmore. There were two paths up the meadow-like hillside and we started on one and finished on another as the route climbed though buttercups to emerge onto the road at Dunsmore. Locals were driving their red cars at great speed through the little roads – Harold said he bet they braked for horses but not for humans.

We turned off at Daffodil Cottage and used fenced-in paths to descend through woodland ­­– while Dorothy and Tosh put the final touches on their plans for a farewell party for the outgoing English head, Mary Otto. (Dorothy was scandalized that Tosh had sent out the invitations second-class.) Tosh stopped once near a stile in a hollow to go behind a bush but Toby wanted to remain with her – no privacy. We passed through a lovely garden onto a lane and turned right to pass some cottages. One more cow-filled field and a stony track led us out to the B4010. Much to my delight, the Wendover railway station was right across the road.

There was some disruption to the train schedule due to engineering works but we now had only fifteen minutes to wait for a bus to Amersham. I ate an apple and the rest snacked too. The lady bus driver stopped in Great Missenden ­– where Toby had finished his first walk in my knapsack ­– but then she forgot the way in Amersham – having to turn around, appropriately, in the driveway of the Aphasia Centre. There was a fete on the platform of the station in Amersham, as money was being raised for the blind. A highlight was the appearance of several steam engines puffing through the station while we waited for our underground train.

After one stop a young woman in a short skirt got on and smiled in my direction. At first I thought she was smiling at the sleeping dog, who was leaning on Harold’s leg, or at someone behind me, but eventually she said to me, “I really like your shirt.” I was wearing one of my many UCLA t-shirts and so I said, “May I inquire why?” It turned out that she was from Westwood and had lived on Gayley as a child and had innumerable UCLA connections, ones which she went into at great length and very rapidly; she was searching for her perfume bottle in order to give Dorothy a squirt when her station came up and she darted off.

Burnley fans got on the tube at Wembley (quite subdued for a winning side) and the Lees got off to switch to the Jubilee Line at Finchley Road. We were back at Baker Street shortly before 6:00 after another very successful outing. And we still had our smoked salmon and cream cheese sandwiches to look forward to for our tea.

To continue with the fourth day of our walk you need:

Day 4: Great Missenden to Amersham

To continue from Wendover you need:

Day 5: Wendover to Tring Station