June 1, 1996: Stokenchurch to Princes Risborough
Woodland walking is one of the great blessings of Chiltern expeditions.
Only a week after our city walk from Finsbury Park to Clapton on the Green London Way, the Linicks and the Lees returned to the trail – although this time to the countryside itself – in order to do a sixth day on Jimmy Parson’s A Chilterns Hundred. We were joined by two new recruits, Catherine and Bob Harada. They had been talking about having a go at this walking lark for some time and they had each purchased new walking shoes, and – since we were scheduled to do only eight and half miles – this seemed like the right time to see how they liked long-distance walking.
Dorothy was frustrated in her attempts to get Toby into his purple harness, but I told her there would be less road walking this time – so that the harness (which did provide more control) was perhaps not needed. We left the house at 9:00. I carried Toby downstairs – he barks less under such circumstances – but he was as passionate in his excitement over this venture as on previous occasions. We had only a short ride to Marylebone Station and I joined Harold in the short queue, where we purchased return tickets to Princes Risborough. Marylebone Station, like Liverpool Street last week, had undergone some modernization and our next queue was at the coffee wagon, where I ordered cappuccino for Bob Harada and myself and an espresso for Dorothy. Our train (headed for Birmingham, actually) was already at the platform and we found adjacent seats and began our daylong gossip; our colleague Catherine, she won’t mind my saying this, is an adept practitioner of this art and added much new spice to the old menu. We took off at 9:45 and detrained after three stops at High Wycombe. I rounded up two taxis for the next stage of the journey, but the other five walkers had all disappeared into the loos.
My idea of using a taxi at this point was a new one; I had always assumed that a bus would be needed for this stage, but recently I had happened to notice that Stokenchurch is only one more town to the north of West Wycombe – and we had used a cab to get here on Toby’s very first day as a walker, ten and half years earlier. The Asian taxi staff received instructions, and, after they had loaded their knapsacks into the boots, I placed three walkers in one car and three in another. Before we could leave High Wycombe an entrepreneur with a bucket and squeegee attacked the windows of our car, causing our driver to hiss in protest. At the next traffic light Harold appeared at my window to ask, in some agitation, where we were going. I assured him that his taxi was just going to follow ours.
We passed the hill with the mausoleum and continued north under a canopy of copper beeches. I was distressed to discover that an unexpected shower was pelting down with some fury here. The weather report had mentioned this as a remote possibility but I had discounted such warnings in my eagerness to get today’s expedition launched. Fortunately, the sun was out by the time we unloaded next to a bus stop in Stokenchurch. No one had a writing implement, which was too bad, because I wanted to record the telephone number of the local bus company for the day when we might arrive in Stokenchurch at the end of a day’s walk.
It was about 10:50 when we crossed to the north side of the A40 and headed back toward London. Bob was fascinated by my guidebook and helped me look for landmarks as we headed east. Soon we turned left on George Street but almost immediately there were difficulties. A “bottom of the hill” was mentioned in the text, but there wasn’t really any hill here. We were to turn right just before the Bartholomew Tipping School, but the only school in evidence, a newly built one, was on our left and not named Bartholomew Tipping. While we were puzzling all this out it started to drizzle, if only for a few seconds. We walked around the left hand side of the new school, finding access to the open countryside, but I decided this must be wrong. So we returned to Bartholomew Tipping Way and headed into a brand new suburban housing estate. There was a public footpath sign pointing in the direction of a second institution but when we reached its gates (“No dogs” signs in evidence) there was no sign of the fenced-in path we were looking for. I tried various other suburban cul-de-sacs with no luck while the others stood meekly at a corner. A plaque reminded us that this new corner of Stokenchurch had been dedicated in 1994; our guidebook was written in 1988 – which explains why so many of these new landmarks were not mentioned. There was no one to ask directions from. So I decided to try to find our route by going around the back of the first school from the left, after all.
We were soon following a path northwards (not our real direction) but after climbing a gate in a fence (not usually a good sign) I was able to get us moving in a more easterly direction – uphill to a second gate. We rounded two sides of a field on what may have been a path as I maneuvered to get the hilltop woods on our left. Finally I was able to spot a path coming up the hill from the direction of the second school and a hedgerow heading east – which I thought might actually be the one mentioned in the guidebook. It was.
An old lady in a red dress was picking flowers in a nearby field and complaining that she couldn’t get over the stiles anymore. We had one to negotiate, one that put us out on a very level wide track between fields and this we followed for some distance. I was very happy to have gotten the day launched after all, though we had probably added half a mile to our journey. What an interesting introduction to country walking for the Haradas. However everyone seemed to be in very good spirits and the sun and clouds and wonderful green views of Buckinghamshire had put everyone in a jolly mood.
We reached Pophley’s Farm – like many of the farmhouses we were to see today this one had been beautifully restored. At a road we turned left for 150 yards, escaping the traffic to enter a muddy lane that was quite overgrown. This lead steeply downhill to a t-junction; I chose to go left, and this proved correct. We were soon on a road leading to the very bottom of the valley in the hamlet of Bennett End.
I had anticipated our having to walk past the pub because it would not be open this early, but our slow start meant that this might no longer be true. Tosh had it all worked out. A drink now, a picnic lunch, then another drink a few minutes later. This seemed to be acceptable, but as we climbed steeply uphill I began to get an uneasy feeling that the Three Horseshoes might have disappeared forever for the pub sign seemed to be in a derelict state. It wasn’t damaged at all – it was just three simple horseshoes hanging against the sky in a wrought iron frame. It had just gone 12:00.
Tosh entered and returned with the news that dogs were welcome here. The others went in while Harold and I stamped the last of the mud off our boots. In the meantime a Lab-like black dog, a resident of the pub, came out to greet Toby. We sat down in a comfortable lounge and Tosh immediately reversed herself on the food question and ordered a bowl of stilton and celery soup. So did Bob. I let Toby off lead and he had a wonderful time exploring the premises; we could hear him being expelled ever so politely from the kitchen and a few other rooms into which he wandered next. He was too excited to eat his biscuits but the Lab had one and finished Toby’s too. Then she climbed up on a couch next to Tosh and settled down benignly to watch all these Americans.
When the landlady arrived with the soup she noticed that Tosh’s boots were covered in mud. Tosh excused herself to remove the offending layer while the rest of us sipped our drinks. A little while later she returned and shortly thereafter she burst into hysterical laughter – it took some time for her to share the joke with us. It seems that as she sat down to dine she noticed a clump of mud on the floor. Absentmindedly she picked it up, hoping to dispose of it in an ashtray – and put into her soup instead! Catherine was speculating on the age at which she could at last do only what she wanted to do. We teased Harold by asking him when Tosh had reached this milestone in her life. “No comment,” he said wisely.
I was the last to finish my pint and we all used the loos. Then, after forty minutes or so, we resumed our walk up the road for another 500 yards. Here we turned left – but I could find no stile into our next field. Not to worry, since the route forward was obvious. We descended one field and climbed the opposite one and here we decided to open our lunch bags. Toby had a hardboiled egg and some water and Dorothy and I ate some lovely sandwiches on ciabatta bread. Below us horses wandered about in an adjacent field and over to the right a field of yellow rape glowed against the darkening skyline. Then there was another brief drizzle. Everyone donned rain gear and I fished out Dorothy’s rain jacket. She was cowering miserably in a corner under a bush, her chagrin deepened by the fact that Catherine was sporting a stylish Mary Quant poncho.
The rain stopped before I could get any gear on, but we decided to continue our walk. The route now lay through the Radnage churchyard and downhill again in a field of buttercups. Then there was a fairly steep bit of uphill between two bits of woodland. A family was descending with three dogs, one of whom was missing a front leg. We had a nice walk through woodland as we reached the top of the hill, emerging after a while at the road on Bledlow Ridge. A second pub, the Boot Inn, beckoned on our left, but they were unwelcoming to dogs inside and we didn’t feel like sitting in the garden. There were a few route finding mysteries here but I found our way behind the pub and lead us on a northerly march into the hamlet of Rout’s Green. It was rather grey at this point and I was again a bit mystified by the directions, but before long everything came right and we began a nice woodland descent in a hollow. I paused once to give Toby some more water. The sun had reemerged by the time we pulled up opposite Callow Down Farm (Tosh’s mile 1300, I later discovered), where pink piglets were tooling about with their elders in a series of porcine palaces.
Here we met Skip II (or so we named him), a black, white and grey sheep dog who was charmed by Toby’s brusque manner and by our friendly voices. As we continued north he decided to accompany us, and our suggestions that he return home seemed to have no effect. We passed a wonderful cottage with a resplendent spring garden and took an access road up to the highway. A car was making its way slowly down the hill in our direction and the young lady who was driving it rolled down her window to ask, “Are you trying to get rid of that dog. He belongs to my neighbors and they don’t like it when he wanders off.” We considered putting “Skip” in her back seat but he had no collar and would not be caught. She drove off and we continued forward, hoping that a cattle grid, over which I had to carry Toby, would discourage “Skip.” Bob and Harold remained behind to shoo him away but this didn’t work either. I wanted the others to stop, just to see if “Skip” would get bored and go home but Tosh wouldn’t slow down. I was particularly worried when we got to the Bledlow road, with its whizzing traffic, but our escape from it, through a kissing gate with a mesh curtain, proved our salvation at last – for “Skip” couldn’t get through this and had to give up on his new companions.
We followed a hedgerow and even spent a brief period on the Ridgeway as we walked through fields of sheep and bunny rabbits. Some of the sheep were quite brave and stood their ground against the tethered Schnauzer. It was a glorious sunny afternoon now and we were reaching the last of the day’s summits at the Upper Icknield Way. Here we began a descent on a gravel track that lead us unerringly to the village of Bledlow. It was 3:15 and the Lions of Bledlow was still open – and didn’t mind dogs.
Ours was pretty tired now, and he was quite content to have a snooze on the tiles while I drank a diet coke. A local resident introduced himself and reminded us that there was a wonderful garden that we ought not to miss as we passed the church on our way out of town. “We don’t advertise this too much, but everyone is welcome,” he added before climbing into his BMW. The church was having an open day and its bells were tolling raucously as we entered the driveway of a stately home on the opposite side and stepped into the garden of the home of Lord Carrington, Margaret Thatcher’s foreign secretary. The diplomat had evidently designed this wonderful space himself; it contained not only very tasteful plantings but some witty outdoor sculpture, including an endearing gorilla. We wandered about for fifteen minutes and were just leaving when the nanny arrived with a Pug and a stroller to scold us for being on private property. So much more the lounge lizard’s advice at the Lions!
I wanted to make the 4:38 from Princes Risborough and we had just under an hour to complete the last mile and three quarters. There were some ambiguities leaving Bledlow but I got these solved and we pressed on toward Horsenden – Toby having a drink from a fast moving stream. Tosh seemed to be finding every reason for slowing us down now, but I pressed on past Gate Cottage and forward through the Princes industrial estate, with its laboratories, its motorcycle maintenance shop, and its mom and pop bricklayers – who were repairing a bridge abutment. I could now see the B4444, where we turned right. Toby was moving slowly now and I had to pull him along as we used the grassy verge or the roadway itself to pass beneath two railway bridges and pull even with the station access road at 4:33. The others trailed in behind us and we had only a few minutes on the platform before boarding our train back to Marylebone – which we reached at about 5:30. The day had been a splendid one, and the Haradas had ended up with an excellent nine-mile introduction to the pleasures of long distance footpath walking. They accompanied us as far as Maida Vale, where we headed off in opposite directions. It was 5:50 when we reached home.
To continue with the next day of our walk you need:
Day 7: Wigginton to Great Missenden
To continue from Princes Risborough you need: