April 19, 2009: Kingswood to Aldbury

Tosh and I selected a spring Sunday for the continuation of our walk on the Chiltern Way and that is why we met at 9:10 in the concourse of Marylebone Station on this sunny day in 2009. I could spot my walking partner, today wearing her California Berkeley baseball cap, as she drank a cup of coffee at a little table near the ticket line. There were two windows open today and it didn’t take us too long to purchase our returns from Amersham to Wendover – our Freedom passes would take us to Amersham and back for free. I now bought a cup of cappuccino myself and had a few sips of this before we carried our beverages aboard the 9:27. I was very pleased that, this early in the year, we were already undertaking our third walk.

A number of aspects of today’s journey would be unusual and the first of these occurred after our train pulled into Wendover at 10:13. Waiting for us in the parking lot were two of Tosh’s friends, Carol and Antony Chapman. Tosh had long promised these people that she would call them when our walk neared their Wendover home and they had now agreed to accompany us on our next stage. Carol had know Tosh since they both trained as dyslexia reading specialists and Carol had evidently tutored at ASL – Tim Lee had been one of her pupils. Antony, a retired businessman with a Cambridge pedigree, was eager to compare our first names (and any nicknames we had picked up over the years) while Tosh used the station loo.

Now, instead of summoning the usual taxi, we were able to ride in comfort as Antony piloted us past his own house near the Ridgeway and on to the Old Swan in Kingswood – or Swan Bottom as Carol called it. She knew this village well since her children had once been driven here for their music lessons at a cottage just across the road form the pub.

Once again I used the bench in front of the Old Swan to get myself organized, though this time I was not attempting to use my mobile phone but merely to get my map and guidebook pages in order in the plastic case. Shortly after 10:30 we were off. I noted that our first instruction required a left turn over a stile just opposite Jim’s Seat. Your could still see a bare patch where such a seat may have been anchored in the past; Carol was laughing because the Jim in question had been the aforementioned music teacher.

I soon discovered that there wasn’t much need for any guidebook today since Antony, an experienced walker, knew the route, indeed he had donated £50 to help launch the Chiltern Way enterprise. His name had been listed in the first edition of Nick Moon’s guidebook but he was, like me, disgruntled that he soon had to buy a second edition when the route was extended at a number of points. He now told me about annual walking expeditions with old college chums, ones that sounded very much like my adventures with Margie and the Lees – though he and his pals like to use their own pre-parked cars to get back to their accommodation. He said that he had done the Wessex Ridgeway and was doing the Yorkshire Wolds this summer. I was afraid that with his long legs he would soon outpace me (and it was obvious that he wanted to be last in line, which is my natural position) but after a few miles he started to slow down so this wasn’t a problem. Tosh and Carol, quite a distance ahead of us, kept up a non-stop chatter all day long.

We walked along a wide strip between fences, sloping off to the left amid trees to climb our first stile. Shortly after this we turned left (north) and walked along hedgerows through several fields before entering woodland on our right and marching across this in a northeasterly direction. Although it was still cool (I wore my rain jacket) it was clear and bright and the vistas were magnificent this morning. Although many of the trees lacked leaves, others were in radiant blossom and whenever the sun had penetrated, as at the margins of woodland, the bluebells were radiant in their purple-blue finery.

After we had left the cover of the woods we took another half right, crossed a little rise and descended to a dip where three hedges met; more walking along the side of hedges brought us out to Arrewig Lane. It was a natural temptation to assume that we had in this name a corruption of “earwig” but the guidebook says the word is Saxon in origin and means the “the way to arable fields.”

We turned right on this lane and left it shortly for a path through a hedge gap and a path that passed a pond. More woodland walking in Lady Grove followed; here the women missed a turnoff (though, on the whole, the route was again well marked) and we had to call them back to rise to a field edge and another stile. We crossed the field and entered Ashen Grove where we turned right on an ancient roadway called Broad Street. This gave way to a concrete track as we reached the precincts of another of those medieval relics, Dundrige Manor. On our right we could still see the course of the old moat and there were a number of interesting outbuildings and a pseudo-drawbridge with portcullis.

An avenue of beach trees kept us moving forward to Oak Lane, which we followed for only a short distance before turning right onto Jenkins Lane. This led us up to the White Lion in the village of St. Leonards, but it was too early for a pit stop. I used a fence to tie one of my recalcitrant laces and then we continued on over grassy fields where I marveled that the two clumps of bushes mentioned as guideposts by Moon were still in place. After crossing Bottom Road we had to climb more steeply up another stretch of greensward to reach Little Twye Road at Buckland Common.

We remained on tarmac for a while with the ladies again missing a turnoff – not too surprising since it was on our left this time. It put us onto more open fields as we headed in a north-by-northwest direction (no crop dusters in evidence) passing to the right of a farm house painted sky blue. We crossed a farm road and continued forward over several more fields before entering woodland again, this time if Drayton Wood. It was wet underfoot here and a lot of evasive action had to be taken in order to keep the boots out of the mud. At one point I followed the others on a dry short cut through the beech leaves, noticing only at the last moment that over on my left there was waymark post. I decided to visit this and, sure enough, it was obvious that another Chiltern Way turnoff had been missed by the others. Soon we were back in the mud on a path whose overhanging foliage had not permitted the surface to dry properly. We soon escaped this to cross a field and emerge onto Shire Lane, here appropriately marking the county boundary between Buckinghamshire and Hertfordshire.

In Hertfordshire now we turned north again and crossed a field to enter a woods where we were accompanied, once again, by Grim’s Ditch, the ancient earthwork which we had encountered many a time on this route and the Ridgeway also – indeed we seemed to walk atop this artifact a number of times today. At the far end of our tree belt we reached another ancient roadway, Brown’s Lane, continuing on into a wood called High Scrubs. There was some ambiguity about the way forward but we continued along the ditch and, when we emerged from the trees, we were rewarded with the first sight of our noontime village on the left: Wiggington.

In more open country we used lanes to head east – with quite a few other people now using the local paths as well. When we reached the Chesham Road we left the Chiltern Way for a while, heading north into the village (which even had pavement for pedestrians part of the time) in search of the Greyhound pub. After a third of a mile its cheery yellow façade could be spotted, though Antony now admitted that he didn’t feel very much like a greyhound anymore). We had walked about four and a half miles and it was just going on 1:00.

The village of Wigginton is one of those spots that has had more than a casual role in my walking history. I first reached it in 1981, hoping to end a stretch on the Ridgeway with a bus ride to Chesham – just as the bus pulled away. The Lees and I had reached the village in May of 1996 while doing a stretch of the old Chilterns Hundred route and the following January the three of us (and English Department colleague Jessica Bond) had braved the January chill to begin a walk to Great Missenden here. What I had totally forgotten was that on this occasion we had drinks at the White Lion in St. Leonard’s and lunch at the Old Swan in Swan Bottom!

The landlords on that wintry day in 1997 had, as at the Rising Sun, objected to our muddy footwear but there was on objection to our boots at the Greyhound today – where we crowded into a little table opposite the bar. I told the others that the drinks were on me today for we were celebrating another milestone, the Chapmans bringing to an even 200 the number of people I had taken on walking trips since beginning this lark in 1974.

We disdained the Sunday roast menu in favor of sandwiches (turkey, ham, I had the prawn) on brown bread, served with a small dish of salad and some crisps. This was excellent provender and I managed to keep the Marie Rose off of my fleece. The Greyhound was crowded with one large family having a kind of banquet in front of the loos. A chap came in with a large female Staffie; while he stood at the bar drinking his pint the dozy dog rose on her back legs, placed her chin on the counter, and waited for service (in vain). I drink a pint of lager, Antony a pint of Guinness. It was nice to sit down for a while but eventually it was time to move off. I now stuffed my rain jacket into my pack for, at 2:00, it was getting warm outside.

We retraced our route back to the Chiltern Way, and left the Chesham Road for a short path to a road in Wigginton Bottom. Here we continued uphill for a while, emerging with a view forward over the valley bottom –where trains were already evident on the line from Euston to the north. We walked through Lower Wood and across more fields heading due east until it was necessary to drop down to a roadway that brought us under the A41. We emerged next to a house called Tinker’s Lodge and pressed on along a track that brought us out to the A4251 in the valley bottom. It was a bit of a shock to suddenly reach so much traffic (there was even a car showroom) but we were amused to do so in a village called Cow Roast. We turned right at the Cow Roast Inn (I detected no whiff of barbeque), crossed the main highway, followed a minor road around a bend and climbed into a bare field whose trod lead unerringly to a pedestrian bridge over the railway line.

I can’t remember whether it was near here or at some other spot nearby that we encountered, for the second time today, a field full of llamas. These creatures, who were quite interested in passersby, appeared in various shades of grey and brown and certainly added a exotic Andean touch to the Chilterns with their merry and mischievous eyes.

On the other side of the railway line we passed a family out nature-watching – with one little girl proudly wearing a large pair of binoculars around her neck. We turned right on a green lane and then left to begin our staged ascent of the valley side. Behind us a woman on a tractor slowly chugged up the lane as well but when we reached the outskirts of Norcott Court Farm she directed us to the left and we passed just outside some of the farm buildings to climb in a northerly direction up a long field in search of a hidden stile at the end. We walked along field edges for a while, with a wonderful view of the sloping footbridge that carries the Ridgeway over the A41 on our left.

At a gate we turned into a wood called The Hangings and continued uphill to pass an industrial site, Rose Cottage and the Old Farmhouse at Tom’s Hill – the latter was surrounded by a new thick brick wall so forbidding that one had to speculate on which rock star lived there now. We used the access road to this pile to continue in a northerly direction, emerging on a hairpin bend in Tom Hill’s Road and soon leaving this surface for a footpath on our left, one that almost immediately offered views of our destination village, Aldbury.

Since we were soon to enter civilization again I dropped back for a last woodland pee, then followed the others downhill. At a corner of the town we reached Malting Lane, where we said goodbye to the Chiltern Way for the day and continued forward on the Lane itself, passing the Valiant Trooper pub and turning right in the direction of a second village pub, also called The Greyhound. Our goal was the second of the Chapman cars, one which these kind people had stationed here earlier this morning in order to get us back to Wendover.

There was some talk of our trying to make the 4:13 for Marylebone (there is only one train an hour on a Sunday) but it was already 4:00 and so this would not be possible. We had walked eight and a half miles.

We reached the aforementioned Vauxhall Corsa, parked opposite the Greyhound and I must say that squeezing into the back seat of this two-door vehicle did not help my back – already well-jarred from hopping off all those stiles. Carol drove, with plenty of instructions from Antony, and the plan was now for us to have tea at their house before using the 5:13 train.

They lived in a large semi-detached cottage in a suburban enclave south of Wendover, a place of great charm. We sat on the terrace for our tea and some chocolate fairy cakes that Carol had recently baked and then we had a tour of the extensive grounds which included tennis court and private vineyard – though Antony had pulled up almost half of the vines as the poor soil had proved its iron deficiency and many of the plants had died. Carol now described a recent accident in which she had fallen off the seat of the tractor mower as she attempted too sharp a turn on the extremely steep side of one of the grassy planes in the garden.

We were soon delivered to Wendover Station and at 5:13 Tosh and I returned to London after a most successful outing. Tosh left the train at Harrow-on-Hill. I reached Marylebone at 6:00 and at about 6:45 Hanna delivered Fritz to my door. He too had enjoyed a wonderful day outdoors.

To continue with our next stage you need:

Day 12: Aldbury to Dunstable