September 22, 2005: Hemel Hempstead to Chorleywood

On this first autumn day in the year 2005 my long-time walking partners, Tosh and Harold Lee, joined me for the first day of a walk on the Chiltern Way. The route was only a few years old and, as a Millennium project of the Chiltern Society, it was meant to be a successor to an earlier circular route that we had completed a number of years before, the late Jimmy Parson’s A Chilterns Hundred. This time the circumnavigation of London’s northerly rim was to be a much more ambitious undertaking – almost twice as long as the original.

I had thought that we would just do only those sections new to us, but so many variations had been introduced that only a day and half of the older route was essentially identical. In addition, having already purchased Nick Moon’s Book Castle guide I was both delighted and chagrined to discover that the route soon had extensions, north and south, and that I would now have to buy an updated version even before setting a single foot on the Way. This I had done earlier this year, noting that we could now successfully complete some 20 stages without any sense that we were repeating ourselves. With the Vanguard Way completed in August, we were ready to make a start.

Naturally, since this involved the Lees, there were complications. Tosh wanted to get home at the end of the day in order to make ready for an improving lecture later that night – and therefore she wanted an early start. I knew this would not only cost a lot more on tube and train (since we would now begin before our passes kicked in) but that we would arrive at what should have been our noontime pub well before noon. Nevertheless we agreed to bring our own sandwiches with us and I suggested an 8:20 rendezvous at Euston Station, a rather unique starting point for a day walk.

I left the house on a lovely sunny Thursday morning at 7:30 and when I got to Baker Street I waited at the Metropolitan Line platform for a continuation on to Euston Square. Then I began my hike with a walk over to the station, where Tosh and Harold were just splitting up so that she could get the coffee and he the tickets. Harold agreed to get my ticket too and I headed for a mini-mart where I could purchase my sandwiches. Tosh was easy to spot in the vast crowd as she was wearing a red Iowa cap and a pink jacket. I suggested that we could make the 8:24 if we headed for platform 11 immediately, and so we did this ­– Harold complaining (ironically) that our tickets had cost £8.60 each.

The platform was crowded with other passengers waiting for our train to arrive but soon there was an announcement redirecting the mob to platform 9 – where those exiting and those boarding were caught up in a giant ruck. Our train was crowded with office workers and it was hard to find a place to sit down. We chose some seats at the very end of a compartment where there was a tiny table just large enough to bear the weight of three large cups of coffee. I was sitting on the edge of my seat (a Metro reader to my left) trying to eat an almond croissant, but other passengers were standing. Tosh had the good grace to apologize for these circumstances – her early start had gotten us into a rush hour melee.

Our train left almost ten minutes late but at least there was only a Watford stop before we were delivered to Hemel Hempstead. Everyone visited the loos and I was able to remove a coating of almond fondant from my hands. Tosh then bought us drinks from a station shop, though I was astonished to be handed a can when there were more useful screwtop bottles available (my can, unopened, ended up in my refrigerator).

We began our walk at 9:05, an early start indeed. I was anxious to see just how good the guidebook was and what the state of waymarking might be as well, and so we headed down an approach road and on to a roundabout where we had to depend on the kindness of a lady in an SUV for a break in the traffic – which allowed us a dash across the A2451. Here a pavement took us west under three bridges before we had to re-cross the same road, though at a safer spot for pedestrians. Here we discovered our first white on green Chiltern Way finger post and entered a fenced path where the spiders had been busily at work in weaving the most fantastic series of dew-soaked webs. A half right put us on a steep bit of path as we climbed through a kissing gate frame and up to a suburban corner of Hemel Hempstead. Much of an easy ascent was now done in a cool woodland and I was able to retain my blue sweatshirt over a flannel shirt without feeling too warm.

We reached Felden Lane and turned uphill in posh surroundings, taking a right fork on a lane leading to Felden Lodge. We didn’t quite reach this structure as we passed over part of a golf course and, after a large ash tree, headed left toward a kissing gate in a hedge. Coming along the lane toward us was an old lady using a zimmer frame, an equally ancient Westie tied to the contraption. Our route required us to cross several meadows as we emerged next to a garage. Progress accompanied by hedges, we now continued in a southwesterly direction across several shorter fields to arrive at Longcroft Lane. On our left was a very handsome flower-bedecked home, Felden Barns, and soon thereafter we discovered a sign for Further Felden. Workers were manhandling a building site across the road and we decided to call this spot Ultimate Felden.

On our right was an extensive woodland, Bury Wood, and we kept to the outside of this foliage with a huge recently ploughed field on our left. A good pathway had been left for walkers and we were making good progress on a delightfully sunny, if hazy morning. It was amazing to encounter such large empty spaces so close to London – for these days you expects another housing development wherever you go. Eventually we reached a gate (these had replaced the advertised stiles at most locations on the first half of our walk today) and here found a delightful path heading down the grass in the direction of the church at Bovingdon.

It was an inviting prospect but it was not ours to take. We had to keep our elevation on another wet, grassy path toward a fenced path between gardens and so out to Chipperfield Road. We turned right on this briefly, and I paused to change pages. I should add that one consequence of having two editions of the same book is that for most sections I could merely deconstruct the older volume and take only the loose pages relevant to the day’s activity. I also had the old Landranger Sheet 166 in my map case, but I never had to refer to it. We had come far enough for me to conclude that waymarking was good, with lots of Chiltern Society metal discs and finger posts and an excellent text. I was having a little difficulty with Moon’s maps – he could cram almost five miles of progress onto a single page and this made it hard to see detail – but otherwise I was well satisfied. Tosh was especially thankful that gates were replacing stiles hereabouts and said she was going to write a thank you letter to the Chiltern Society.

Next we turned off to our left in a little housing enclave along Austins Mead, penetrating suburbia by walking on a narrow path between numbers 51 and 52. More field walking followed. Only rarely did we encounter other walkers, though usually these were locals out with their dogs. We continued to make progress along a plateau bisected by fences and lines of trees, with the directions usually calling for a passage along the left side of a hedge, or the right. There was very little color, just the brown of the fields and the green of the woods. About the only time we had any other colors came when we neared the gardens of some suburban development – which usually looked like council housing for the rich.

A holly bush screened us from our next turnoff but several fields later we had reached a road junction at Flaunden Lane. Here I hung back, hoping for a quiet pee but the Lees wouldn’t budge from their spot without me. Young ladies on horses were trotting along – the mistresses of all they surveyed ­– and, indeed, we were definitely among the horsey set now. We had a little bit of road walking here and then we left this surface for a strangely pathless route along the edge of a wood. I was busily counting the number of fields because after leaving the third one we were supposed to make a left turn and follow a tree line. Oak trees were our landmarks ahead and having passed them we emerged onto Holly Hedges Lane. Our turnoff from this stretch of woodland returned us to field paths and soon we had reached another road junction, with the tarmac stretch ahead of us climbing gently in the direction of Flaunden village.

We reached the notice board at the borders of this place about 11:20 – we had covered 4.6 miles – and I made the mistake of mentioning that my original plan was for us to have lunch in a pub here. Much to my surprise, Tosh now wanted to go into the village (still hidden ahead of us) for a drink at the Green Dragon. This, it seemed to me, would defeat the logic that had impelled us to make our early start in the first place and Harold too was a but cross, “Come on now, Tosh.” So we decided to press on, turning left into another field for more cross country progress along the edges of hedges. Moon makes much of the local footpath designations – path FD 11, SA 51, etc. – but these were never marked on any of the signposts.

We reached Newhouse Farm and dropped down to a lane that took us to Great Bragman’s Farm. Here we edged around some of the farm buildings and continued cross-country to Rosehall Farm. We used the access lane from this establishment to continue, moving mostly in a southeasterly direction, and after several more stiles and grassy fields we sat down next to the path (me on my map case) and pulled out our sandwiches. It was 11:50 and this was our first rest.

We didn’t linger for long, though the place was pleasant enough and the sun was quite warm. I ate a prawn and mayo sandwich and an egg and cress one and washed down some cheese and onion crisps with my canteen. We had just time to address the mess in Iraq – with Tosh, for once – uncertain what we should be doing there now – and after half an hour we were heading off again.

We crossed Moor Lane and were accompanied for a while by a line of cypress trees. Paths lead us through woods in Dawes Common and out to Dawes Lane. Ahead of us there were some lovely views of the Chess Valley on our right. Our next landmark was the tower of Sarratt church, but it was hard to pick this out in the foliage that surrounded it – and we were staring into the hazy sun – but field paths brought us closer to the hamlet of Sarratt Church End and a stile put us into the churchyard itself.

The ancient church, going back to the 12th century, had been restored by George Gilbert Scott in 1845, and there was a sign inviting walkers to visits its interiors – as long as they didn’t have muddy boots. So we did this, our footwear quite dry, discovering a man at prayer in one of the pews and retreating to the bright sun outside, where, opposite the lych gate, I could see the cars parked in front of the Cock Inn.

Here we did stop for a cold drink in a very friendly establishment. There was a chalkboard welcoming us in the names of the proprietors and their dogs, dozy Labs lolling at the foot of the bar stools. It was only 1:00 and, too late, I realized that we could have had lunch here, the 7.1 mile mark. Harold had a half lager, Tosh half a bitter shandy and a cup of coffee (which she sent back because it wasn’t hot enough) and I drank a vodka and orange on ice. Finally I took off my sweatshirt and put it in my knapsack.

Again we hadn’t paused for more than half an hour before resuming our route, which required us to retrace our way through the churchyard and climb again its entrance stile. Here we turned left and followed a hedge out to a line of trees where views of the Chess Valley opened up again. A real descent began here as we dropped briefly into Bucks and down to the riverside, slowed in our progress by some townies who were ahead of us, a party that included a water loving Alsatian and a woman in a long denim skirt that didn’t do so well climbing the stiles.

We got around them at the second of the two bridges over the marshy Chess and then we began a gradual ascent up a wooded depression. It was humid in here and I was glad to reach open country – even if we were now invited to climb steeply up a grassy field in the direction of Wyburn Wood, whose nose we reached at the top. We passed through one edge of this woodland and followed a few more hedges out to a road, where we turned right. Had we continued forward we would have entered Chenies village and even encountered the Bedford Arms, which had left us out in the cold because we had my dog Toby with us on the day we walked the first stretch of the Chilterns Hundred route in 1994 – but which we now approached without quite reaching.

Instead, after passing the Old Rectory, we turned left (now heading west) to follow along the edge of a cricket pitch and eventually on to the A404, where we turned south, descending on a track into a woodland that surrounded the underpass beneath the Metropolitan Line. It was very dark and dusty in this tunnel and I was glad to leave it, even though we now had to follow paths and tracks (a veritable dual carriage way) uphill and so back into Herts.

At the top of our incline there was a delightful stretch through mixed woodland on level surfaces again and out to a second Newhouse Farm, where a tall cedar was our guidepost. The farm’s drive led us out to the junction of Blacketts Wood Drive and Chalfont Lane. Here was the only time in the walk that I used my compass – for I wanted to make sure that we were heading southeast along the latter. I was also discovering that the 9.9 miles from Hemel Hempstead to Chorleywood West were measured up to this point and not to Chalfont Lane and Shires Lane, a suburban corner which we now had to reach by walking along the former. This also meant that the proper distance for the day’s walk would be eleven miles.

Every other detached colossus in the squirearchy was undergoing extensive conversion, it appeared. But by the time we had rounded our corner onto Shires Lane and headed east toward the Chorleywood Station architecture had become a little more modest. Tosh was already muttering over the fact that we needed to descend a steep hill – but only because this meant an ascent at the beginning of the next stage. Soon we were among the buses disgorging uniformed school children; it took us a while to get across a busy shopping street and then we had to walk beneath another Metropolitan Line underpass and climb a hill to the station – where our Freedom Passes worked at last. It was 3:10, a very early finish for us.

There wasn’t much of a wait for a train and we were soon aboard, with the Lees getting off at Harrow-on-the-Hill. They had thoroughly enjoyed the day’s walk and so had I, though I must say that there had been perhaps too little variety in the countryside. Even rereading the guidebook as I worked on these notes I had trouble visualizing what was being described – it was all a blur. Also, I regretted the fact that the Way only skirted Bovingdon, Flaunden, Sarratt and Chenies – without actually entering these or any other villages.

I toyed with the idea of getting off at Northwick Park and walking the three blocks to the Kenton stop on the Bakerloo Line, but I was already stiffening up and, under any circumstances, we had boarded a fast train to Baker Street which didn’t stop at Northwick Park. In spite of a delay at Wembley this journey went quickly enough and I was home shortly before 4:00 – which meant that I had to go on another walk  – with the dog.

For our next stage see:

The Chiltern Way Day 2: Chorleywood West to Penn