May 25, 1997: Skirmett to Nuffield
Toby
On the middle day of the second May Bank Holiday in 1997 the Lees and I set out on the next-to-last day of our Chilterns Hundred walk. Dorothy was in Brussels and several other people had turned us down, so we would have only one other companion, Toby – who had reached his twelfth birthday only the week before. I tried to disguise our departure as long as possible, doing some packing the night before, but, as we left the house on a beautiful sunny Sunday shortly before 8:00, he was beside himself with excitement.
Paddington Station was crowded with other holidaymakers. I wonder if they too enjoyed the bargain I received when I asked for a return to Ealing Broadway – priced at a mere £2.00 total. (It had cost me more to travel two stops on the Bakerloo line!) I was a bit early, so Toby and I went into the W.H. Smith and I bought some candy for the trip. A missile of pigeon shit plopped down next to the bench we were sitting on as we waited for the 8:40 train. When a platform was announced we were advised to take seats in the front train – and then advised to vacate these seats and take the rear train! As a consequence we were just a few minutes late, arriving at Ealing Broadway just before 9:00. The Lees were in the parking lot, watching a giant crane at work.
Harold drove west on the M4 and made his way north, crossing the Thames on the Henley Bridge and pulling up at a spot near the Henley train station. Toby had spent most of this journey on my lap in the back seat of the Granada, but he seemed to have survived the journey without the need to empty the contents of his stomach on Harold’s upholstery. We found several cab companies nearby and went into Talbot Taxis to arrange the next stage of a journey that I had spent a lot of time thinking about. The driver was to follow Harold to Nuffield, our ultimate destination, and -–after Harold had parked his car there – return with him to pick the rest of us up in Henley. In the meantime Tosh and I and the dog wandered about a bit and Tosh waited out a coachload of German ladies in order to use the train station loo. A swan hissed at the innocent Schnauzer twice as we strolled down to the river. After about twenty minutes the taxi returned and we got in with our packs for the short ride to Skirmett. Before long we were covering old territory and approaching the Frog, where our driver left us off in the same car park where the Marlow town car had picked us up on the previous outing. It cost us £17, plus tip, to accomplish this strategy – which made it possible to complete this day at a leisurely pace, and to be able to accomplish both this and the next stage without the need for an overnight stop.
I took off my sweatshirt, walking for the rest of the day in a blue green t-shirt. I gave Toby a biscuit and arranged the rest of my pack, and we were ready to go at just about 10:30. A stony track left the main road almost immediately and we used this to gain access to several fields as we climbed the first of today’s four major hills. One of the reasons that I wanted a leisurely timetable today was that I didn’t want a repetition of the somewhat hurried pace that had done in my right knee five weeks earlier. I was pleased to see that I was not too bothered by it this time (the left one was just as creaky) as we entered Adam’s Wood and continued to rise on a path that soon divided to specialize in foot passengers on the left and horse riders on the right.
There were many other Sunday walkers about and we greeted the first of these as we neared the top of our climb, following a track down to a point where we could overlook Fingest village. Just as we neared the edge of the wood a girl climbed the stile coming from the opposite direction. She had a little dog on lead and Tosh wondered if there was some special reason for this protective gesture. After we untangled the little dogs we discovered that Tosh was right. Sheep filled the slopes of the hillside that plummeted down to Fingest and Toby had to go on lead himself as we descended. The views were magnificent and off to the left they were dominated by the Turville windmill – which we would soon be approaching ourselves.
We walked along the field edge until we reached the bottom and then onto a lane to reach tarmac. Here we turned left and entered Fingest, stopping briefly opposite the 12th century St. Bartholomew’s church. Two elderly wild ones drew up on their motorcycles just before we crossed the street and found our path forward. We headed west along paths in woodland, Harold pausing for a pee, and me too (until Tosh followed to keep up her end of the non-stop conversation). Just below the windmill we descended to some stiles and had a rest on the grass while Toby had a word for every stroller and a large dog named Marmeduke (“Eat him,” his master ordered in reply).
We now watched most of these passersby struggle directly up the hill to the windmill. Toby also had his first bowl of water – a process repeated many times on this warm day, and I drank some raspberry iced tea. Then we passed through Turville village and forward to the foot of a second hill. We struggled up this at a pretty good pace and when we reached the summit plateau we continued onwards past farm buildings to continue westward on a concrete drive. We were entering South End village, at about the three and three quarters mile mark, and at about 12:30 we reached the village green and began our search for the Bull and Butcher Inn.
Some locals, sitting on a bench, pointed out the right building, but advised us that it was no longer a pub! I wasn’t too disappointed since there remained another lunchtime target – which would not be too hard to reach before closing time. We turned left at the old B&B and then right to enter woodland again, crossing the Oxfordshire boundary, and penetrating the Stonor estate. We never saw any, but this is a deer park and dogs (“and other pets”!) had to go on lead as we passed through a wire fence and began a lovely descent through a rhododendron-bedecked woods. Eventually we emerged into open country again, with good views down to Stonor House, where a wonderful collection of antique models were arriving for a car rally. The path was full of barely submerged flints and I tripped on one of these, was propelled forward like a sideswiped fullback, gathered speed, and barely escaped taking Harold out as I crashed forward, still upright.
We passed through a second gate in the fence and descended to the valley road, heading south on the verge to Stonor village and the Stonor Arms. They allowed dogs into the bar and we found a nice corner table in which to observe the American tourists and the posh Henley set coming in to the restaurant for Sunday lunch. The hotel was quite elegant and the bar filled with rowing memorabilia. The bar menu was not very extensive, but Tosh had a cheddar ploughmans (Toby ate much of this) and Harold and I had sandwiches. I chose chicken and mayonnaise but the mayo was finished and I switched to roast beef. Toby ate much of this too. Imagine a bathroom with real towels in it, and you can see what posh surroundings we had chosen. While we ate I passed on to the Lees the story told us by Julia Stonor many years ago – having fallen out with other members of the famous family, she was banned from her childhood home and could only gain access by lining up with the other tourists for a guided tour – where her presence was a matter of delight and embarrassment to the servants.
We each drank a pint of lager (well, Tosh always has a bitter shandy) and spent about an hour in the pub. Then at about 2:00, with six miles still to go, we headed back up the road (not a full 300 yards I’d say) to a footpath, one which soon gave us access to a third major hill. There seemed to be an extra stile in the ascent of this grassy slope, but I confirmed our position with reference to a small circle of trees identified on the OS map.
At the top of the hill there was another delightful wood. After passing Lodge Farm we entered the Warburg nature reserve and began a steep descent. At the bottom we joined a lane for a while, with many cars entering the reserve parking lot, and continued forward, looking for a footpath escape into Kitesgrove Wood. Another ascent followed, though not as protracted as the previous three. I suggested we have a rest at the top but Tosh had already begun a descent to a spot where two tracks crossed, and here, at the bottom of a short dip, we sat down on some grass and I gave the dog some water while he and I ate a banana.
The guidebook describes this place as a junction of four tracks – but surely it was a junction of two. We should have continued uphill on ours, but the instructions were to turn right and so we did. I gradually became uneasy when no left fork offered itself but I could see where we were heading on the OS map and it was not too difficult to make an adjustment by turning left at the end of the woods and climbing uphill on the outside of the trees until the route we should have been on came in from the left at Soundness Lodge.
A level bit of tarmac walking followed, Toby still loose, as we approached the outskirts of Nettlebed village. Here too I think we should have slanted to the right to reach this town a little more quickly, but (in the absence of anything more specific) we persevered to the main A423 road and, dog back on lead, turned right. After crossing the highway we had a leisurely stroll through the village (Tosh and Harold priced an antique music stand in one shop) as I looked for our next turnoff beyond the church. There were some nice buildings in Nettlebed (well named, if you looked closely at the foliage of the verge), but all its charm was sucked away by the rush of through traffic.
We turned south along a farm track, careful to keep Toby’s snout out of the muck-filled pools in the ruts, and headed for a wood. There seemed to be a choice of routes when we reached the end of this lane; for a while we walked just inside the trees and then we took to the road to walk just outside them on a farm lane that climbed a hill. At the top we paused for another rest, our last, and Toby had another drink of water. He was on lead here, since we were near a farmyard, and when I disappeared into the woods for a quiet pee I was pursued by a clattering sound as the curious dog dragged the handle of his lead over the flints embedded in the mud in search of his master.
We continued west, passing Howberry Wood Farm and plodding forward until a right hand bend brought us up to Hayden Farm. Every now and then, even now – when we were entering the last stages of the walk –Toby would trot back to see what was keeping me. I was really proud of his performance on this day.
It wasn’t very easy to find our way around Hayden farm. Something about a Rottweiler had been painted on a sign, but the paths described in the guidebook had disappeared and I had to improvise. We climbed into a field full of cattle and sheep, and Toby was put on lead, of course, but the cattle were very curious and one frisky blonde punk with really sharp horns kept charging after us. I was very relieved to find a stile out of all this – but the path we had now reached was very overgrown.
We fought our way west, still using the occasional stile, and emerged as promised on the tee of the thirteenth green of the local golf course. Again it wasn’t too easy to follow the suggestions outlined in Parsons’s book (there were “gaps” everywhere on this course), but I used my instincts to get us across several stretches of golfer-filled green. I was hoping to see some of the black and white markers that had helped me complete my crossing of the same course as I strode the Ridgeway in 1981, but I didn’t see any of these. I knew we now needed to return to the A423, which I could hear off in the distance, so I found a lane heading north – and at the end of it we could see Harold’s car parked in the lot of the Crown Inn!
I would have liked a celebratory drink in this pub, which I had visited so many years ago, but it was not yet open for evening drinking. It was 5:30 and we had completed over eleven miles. I gave Toby a last drink of water and we climbed into the car. The dog soon left my lap for his own place on the back seat and, as Harold headed north through Watlington (more well-remembered sites from 1981) in search of the M40, Toby fell asleep, as did his owner.
Harold again let me off at Ealing Broadway – at 6:45 – and we were just in time to hop aboard a Paddington train. Similarly, a northbound Bakerloo train was just arriving when we reached Paddington station and we were home less than 30 minutes after leaving Ealing Broadway. My back was a bit sore from the jarring I had received in Stonor Park but my knees showed no ill effect – and this was good news as we prepared for another June excursion on the Southwest Peninsula Coast Path.
I mixed up some aspirin in the dog’s food that night and he seemed to have survived his outing well, but at age twelve it was obvious that Toby was not going to be able to undertake any more full-day walks like this one. Within a few months he was having trouble just getting up and down the stairs, his eyesight all but gone, his hearing impaired. He had completed 63 days of walking at my side in all these loyal years, 631.5 miles, not counting the many extra miles of scouting and backtracking which his little legs had churned out in this progress. Country outings had been one of his great joys and I was very disappointed not to be able to reach for the lead when I was preparing for another outing myself.
Shortly after midnight on December 18, 1998 we were awakened by a most upsetting telephone call from my aged Aunt Elsie, just a few weeks shy of her hundredth birthday. She wanted to tell us she loved us but she was inconsolable with the enormity of a lonely and pain-filled half-life. She did not want to live any longer, but there was no one who could do anything for her. This was not the case with our dog, Toby.
His infirmities became ever more manifest in the autumn of 1998. His coordination was weakening, he often limped, he would go into a trance, staring at a wall or walking in circles. He slept deeply, and no longer rose to greet us on our return. He was so distressed by the dog groomer that she was unable to do her work. He could barely get up on the sofa and he repeatedly fell off our bed. Worse still, he would go into spasms of trembling agitation, howling in pain. Although his appetite remained hearty and he was still continent, Dorothy and I could no longer bear to see him suffer. On the morning of December 19, therefore, we drove to Dr. Gordon’s surgery and held him until it was time for him to go to sleep. He was thirteen years and seven months; he had been our companion and support for twice as long as any of our other dogs and our longest serving pet by five years. When we first got Toby, our friend Marlene, who had introduced us to the breeder, said, “However much you love him now you will certainly grow to love him even more in the future.” She was right.
To continue with our last day on this route you need: