January 26, 1997: Wigginton to Great Missenden

A real walking milestone was reached today, the seventh day of our circular walk on the Chilterns Hundred. The accomplishment had nothing to do with mileage totals or days walked; instead I was able to achieve a long-standing ambition – to walk in the month of January. With today’s walk I could now say that I had undertaken a UK walk in every month of the calendar. The weather had been dry for some time, indeed a January draught, and the weekend was sunny and reasonably clear. I also knew that winds would be light, but that the temperatures were not likely to rise above 6 or 7 degrees. Still, I had the company my old companions, the Lees, and a new recruit in Jessica Bond, the latest addition to the English department faculty ­– and so I agreed to launch the fateful expedition. I met Jessica at 8:05 in the Maida Vale tube stop, pointing out the handmade sign that a Wilbur Smith novel was waiting for some forgetful traveler at the ticket window. We arrived in Euston half an hour later.

“Tosh will arrive with the Sunday newspapers under her arm,” I predicted to Jessica. She did, and Harold was sent off to buy tickets to Berkhampstead. There was plenty of time to get coffee and doughnuts, for the Lees to add more food to their larder and for Simon Callow to pass by in a black fedora. At 8:53 we began a ride of some thirty-minutes on the Northampton train. I told several stories, including my Friday attack with a water pistol on the cheeky lads of Period 2 and my chance encounter in Paddington Rec yesterday with Ralph Bunche, Jr. The reception for this tale would have been more complete had Jessica known who Ralph Bunche Senior was – but she was only 26.

For some time I had been expecting that this stage of our walk would take a little over eleven miles to complete ­– long enough to give some concern about available daylight at this time of the year, but in the event I had second thoughts about this distance. I had already walked the Ridgeway stretch from Wigginton to Tring Station twice and the Lees had walked it once. There really was no need to do it a third time, especially as it would involve a mile and three quarters of uphill slog. On the other hand I had recalled only a few weeks before today’s walk that there was taxi service from Berkhampstead; we had used it to get back to Ashley Green on the London Countryway. So now we found ourselves on this chilly sunny January morning knocking at the door of the stationside cab company and securing a driver who would take us all the way to Wigginton. I had to direct him at a number of stages as he climbed the hill but at last he was driving up the little side road that we had used after struggling up through the woods above Tring on our last Chilterns Hundred excursion. For £8.00 it had been a very worthwhile extravagance to get ourselves into such a useful position by 9:50.

I got out my OS map, folded it, and put in into the protective sleeve I had suspended from my neck – carrying the essential guidebook in my hand throughout the day. I wore my blue coat and my black gloves and my California cap; in my pack there were two full canteens of water, neither of which was opened once on this day. We climbed the first stile and dropped onto the first bit of muddy trail; this was a stretch of the Ridegeway I had last walked in 1981. We skirted the village of Wigginton on its west side, looking into back gardens while the Lees discussed gazebo architecture.

Then we turned left on tarmac to enter the town itself; the roads were white with frost and the footing a bit delicate. At the Greyhound Inn we turned south and crossed another road to climb a stile into a field. Paths were clear on the ground as we headed downhill and there were a lot of Sunday strollers about with their dogs (ours was recovering at home from another bout of tummy trouble). The presence of these local denizens made it easy to spot the right turn we needed  – after climbing another fence. A short bit of uphill, one of the few bits of up and down on a fairly level day, put us over a crest as we headed down a meadow and onto a track that soon crossed another one of Wigginton’s access roads. We headed for yet another road along a path that threaded its way through a thin strip of woodland and past an empty pond. I paused for a pee here before dashing across the road to find a stile in a hedge.

A great field lay before us but our directions were clear –as was the thin, muddy trail that we used to walk beneath a pylon and head southwest toward a distant forest. The scene was very beautiful. Where shade lingered over the field edges the grass was still white with hoarfrost but the sun was warm enough to create a hazy white mist that screened a stile into the forest. We turned right and continued in a westerly direction on a wide woodland track that made for easy, if chilly walking. In fact we were not greatly bothered by the low temperatures this day, perhaps because there was so little wind.

We reached a road and entered another section of forest, leaving it to thread our way through a series of fields and on to the line of trees that encircled Cholesbury Camp – an iron-age settlement according to some scholars. A phalanx of young men with camping equipment was marching across a field as we neared the village church; we walked through the tombstones of the churchyard, a service in progress, to reach the village itself.

We turned left for a short distance and found our way between two houses. Soon we could see down into a valley bottom, clogged with walkers heading in various directions. I lead a charging descent and turned right once I had reached a wire fence. The route now trailed behind houses and gardens and over a series of stiles before rising on a mucky hillside to reach tarmac again. Tosh and Jessica were deep into a debate on the merits of Thomas Hardy, but the troops were also beginning to ask about a refreshment stop and as it was just 11:50 I proposed we have a beer in the nearby pub – which I had spotted on the OS map. It was not very far off route, just beyond the sign signaling our arrival at the village of St. Leonard’s, and at 12:00 precisely we pulled up outside the White Lion.

There were two boot scrapers at the entrance and we had a go, not an easy task after passing over so many slimy surfaces this morning, but when we got inside the publican took an immediate exception to the state of our footwear and one of his underlings returned with some plastic sacks we were supposed to put on over our boots. Tosh actually submitted to this humiliating ritual but Jessica, Harold and I took our boots off and placed them in the sacks. (Harold and I had only been given one bag a piece anyway.) On the bar top was a jar of Toby’s favorite biscuits and I felt quite guilty about leaving him at home as I supped my half lager. Tosh had a shandy and Jessica, who was complaining of tummy trouble, drank a mineral water. I urged my companions not to settle in too comfortably because there was another pub, two miles further on, where we might enjoy a hot lunch. So at 12:20 precisely we were off again, pausing of course – once outside – to put our boots back on.

We were soon back at the access road to Dundridge Manor Farm and we continued past the houses on a forested track for some distance ­– for too much distance I would say, for when we eventually reached another road I knew we must have come too far. Part of the problem was that Jimmy Parson’s account of the stretch in question mentions two bits of woodland by name, but neither of these names appeared on the OS map. We had bent to the right with the track when we should have continued straight ahead at some point. I knew we had to be further to the south and walking along a valley bottom so we chose a path heading southeast and began a descent.

Before long we had reached the valley bottom but my troops were rushing forward at such a pace that it took me a while to catch up and remind them that they were, in fact, heading in the wrong direction. So we retraced the last few minutes of this woodland trod and I was soon encouraged when I saw the open barn on the horizon mentioned in the guidebook. Perhaps we left the shelter of the woodland a bit too early here but there was an easy tractor trod in the adjacent field and we were soon at a stile that gave us access to the hillside on which the barn perched. We climbed up to it and headed south, but we remained back on route only for a short while. This was because I wanted to head off-route slightly – in search of our second pub. A right of way heading in the desired direction was clearly indicated on the map and evident on the ground as well so we headed southwest and reached a road, which we took in a southerly direction for only five minutes or so before pulling up outside the Old Swan pub in Swan Bottom. It was 1:20.

This time we all took our boots off, shuffling around in our stockinged feet as we searched for a convenient table. There was a nice one right between the bar and the kitchen door and we were soon reading our choices on the chalkboard and ordering drinks. Jessica settled for a bowl of soup, and Harold had the Sunday lunch of roast pork and veg, while Tosh and I ordered the bangers and mash. It took a long time for the food to arrive, but we had a jolly enough time, despite the cigarette smoke of the horsey blonde in the corner. The food was good and it was useful to break the trip into three stages on such a cold day.

After lunch I had to re-find the spot where our route crossed a second village street but this was not difficult. More fields and forest beckoned and a new layer of mud soon replaced earlier strata. The sun still seemed to be providing a little warmth but I had put my scarf on and occasionally I put up the hood of my sweatshirt. We passed through a hamlet, appropriately named The Lee, and turned left at the Cock and Rabbit, which seemed to have installed an Italian restaurant. A long stretch on a track took us in a southeasterly direction. Then it was across more broad fields, the trod becoming increasingly muddy as the day wore on. This did not stop the locals, who were out in large numbers in the late afternoon sun. We headed for some cottages, stamped our feet on the tarmac and turned left on the road. It occurred to me only afterwards that this descent from Park Hill was the same stretch of hillside that Harold and I had struggled up on a section of the London Countryway many years earlier. Then we had climbed up from the Great Missenden Bypass; now we followed tracks with deep tractor ruts and barbed wire fences as we dropped down the hill.

When we reached the highway it took us a while to find a safe time to cross. On the other side Harold revealed that he had just fallen victim to a freak accident. He had caught his cords on a strand of wire and a huge flap of the material had torn away, revealing one chilly white knee. I had no pins with me but we did have tape and Harold carved off long swatches of adhesive to repair the tear. He ended up with something like the Cross of Lorraine on his right leg. We followed the same paths we had used on Toby’s very first walk to reach Great Missenden itself. I had now finished two stages here and started two as well. Just before we reached pavement we paused to get some sticks which, a few turns later, we utilized for mud scraping as we sat on the platform of the train station. I had scraped off enough to fill a plant pot by the time I was finished.

We had about fifteen minutes to wait for the 4:24. The sun, a bright red ball in the woods opposite the tracks, was setting at last and it was truly getting chilly. We bought £2.20 tickets from a machine and were given a six-minute ride to Amersham, where there was another wait on the platform. The Lees were the first to leave the Metropolitan Line at Harrow; then Jessica, who had done very well today on her long walker’s legs, departed at Finchley Road. I continued on to Baker Street and took the Bakerloo Line back to my starting point. The icy blast that always greets the traveler as he ascends the Maida Vale escalator was worse than any weather moment on today’s trail. Muddy me arrived home before 6:00.

To continue with our next day on this route you need:

Day 8: Marlow to Skirmett

To continue from Great Missenden you need:

Day 4: Great Missenden to Amersham

 

Day walks from London:

If you are looking for additional London-based walking opportunities you may want to have a look at our experiences on the following routes:

The Chiltern Way

The Green London Way

The Greensand Way

The London Countryway

The London Outer Orbital Path

The North Downs Way

The Ridgeway Path

The Saxon Shore Way

The South Downs Way

The Thames Path

The Vanguard Way

The Wealdway