October 28, 2011: Pegsdon to Preston

After many unsuccessful attempts, Tosh and I at last agreed on a day for the resumption of our walk on the Chiltern Way. I had been puzzling over the best strategy for completing a fairly long day and, at the same time, getting started early enough to get in a noontime pub lunch and to complete the walk well before darkness. In the event I decided not to return to Harlington (whose local cab company was doing a good job of disguising its phone number on the Internet) but to head by train to Hitchin – just as close to our starting point as Harlington but also having the advantage of a taxi rank outside its station. Next it was necessary to convince Tosh that even though we wouldn’t be able to use our Senior Rail Cards we needed to make a much earlier start than usual from King’s Cross – and this we agreed to do on the morning of Friday, October 28.

Leaving Fritz in the care of his Aunt Janet, visiting us from Michigan, I left the house at about 7:25 and, walking stick in my right hand, tapped my way to the Maida Vale tube stop. The Freedom Pass, which used to kick in only at 9:00, is accepted at any hour now and so I was soon downstairs and aboard a train for Baker Street. Almost immediately I began to worry about my 8:15 rendezvous at King’s Cross for our driver came to a halt and began a labored colloquy in the subject of last night’s engineering works and the necessary to “adjust” the timing of the remaining trains. Fortunately we were not long delayed and I was soon able to board an eastbound Circle Line train at Baker Street; it was quite crowded and I had to stand.

When, after a long march through King’s Cross, I reached the ticket queue I could see that Tosh, sporting a new very short haircut, was just completing her purchase of a Hitchin return. We agreed to meet outside the nearby W.H. Smith and I bought my own ticket. While I was waiting for the lady to return from the loos, I noticed that we were early enough to take the 8:23 fast train rather than the 8:36 slow one – and there was even time to get our cappuccinos and pastry before reaching track 2. Outside we could see that the promised sunny skies were very much in evidence.

Tosh used the loos at Hitchin station as well – while I wandered outside to locate the taxi rank. We were soon heading back to Pegsdon while our Asian driver quizzed us on our accents and origins. I used a picnic table at the Live and Let Live pub in Pegdson in order to sort out all of my maps and texts. These included Explorer sheet 193 and the relevant xeroxed pages from Nick Moon’s guidebook. There was a little haze about though visibility was very good and skies remained bright throughout the day. It was 9:17 when we were at last able to move off and at this early hour you could still see your breath. Within a few minutes temperatures began to improve and I was able to walk comfortably in just a maroon sweatshirt throughout the day.

We marched along a private road, heading in a northeasterly direction, marveling at the beauty of the morning and a countryside made ever more colorful by autumn foliage. I had just announced that we needed to look for a turnoff to our right when there it was – signaled by the first in a succession of useful CW waymarks. A double flight of stairs ushered in a steep ascent as we climbed in an easterly direction, a deep combe appearing on our right. At the top of the climb I paused to change xeroxed pages in my map case and I was most chagrined not to be able to come up with page 184 – for I had been most careful to make sure I had with me all of the pages needed for today’s march. I gave up after a while, reasoning that the route seemed very well waymarked and that I also had both a xeroxed version of the guidebook’s map and the OS map to fall back on if needed.

We now moved off in a northerly direction, heading for Knocking Hoe, with a hedge on our right. Views to north and west were magnificent up here. We reached the end of a field and dropped down to a sunken lane, where we turned right for more uphill progress. The sun was very strong in our faces now and I put on my sunglasses; Tosh was already wearing hers. Of course she got well ahead of me now but I overtook her when she paused to pluck at some rosehips in the hedgerow on our left. I reached the top of the track and sat down for a rest on a bench at a corner of the Tingley Field Plantation. I decided to have a more leisurely look at my papers here and discovered that the missing page 184 was folded under and attached to the map xerox.

Tosh eventually joined me and we set off, downhill, heading in a northeasterly direction again and soon linking up with Wood Lane. If I were to suggest that the dominant direction of our route today was a southerly one you would begin to understand that this Chiltern Way Extension, whatever its obvious attractions, had adopted a most devious and seemingly arbitrary course as it rambled up and down – with every gain in elevation soon lost by a corresponding descent – we were in the Chilterns, after all.

On this occasion we did not get very far at all for Tosh now encountered her first sloe bush and harvesting began again (with great consternation over the absence of good sacks to put this treasure in). I waited patiently: one of the advantages of such an early start was that we now had time for such digressions. Then we completed the long descent, leaving Bedfordshire for Hertfordshire, and at the bottom switched abruptly to a more southerly direction as we began to regain all the elevation we had just lost. Our route brought us up alongside the eastern side of Tingley Wood but when tracks divided (without a useful waymark for once) there was a bit of a puzzle for us to solve. I stood for a while thinking about this as a local lady came up behind us with her dog – we saw much dog walking activity today. My compass seemed to indicate that we needed to take a left-hand fork, which headed uphill near High Down House, but once we had reached the end of this route there was no way forward and I decided that we should have stayed alongside the wood after all. A track headed in this direction, with a giant woodpile at the corner of the woods, and nearby we finally found a stile that allowed us to continue in our southerly direction. We had lost about ten minutes in our confusion.

We now headed downhill, a hedge on our right as accompaniment, and then climbed up to a belt of trees, where we turned left. This narrow path soon deposited us on the B655, which we crossed gingerly, in order to continue our southerly march uphill in open country, a small copse hiding a well on our left. A kissing gate introduced us to a grassy track well-encased by surrounding foliage and Tosh again began harvesting hedge fruit as I continued forward downhill and into the precincts of the Park View Stables. There were a number of horses in the fields nearby but, surprisingly, I never say anyone riding today.

Or riding a horse at any rate – for as we walked past the farmhouse a little girl rode by on a pink bicycle. Tosh got a nod out of her by asking if she was enjoying her half term holiday. Our route brought us through a corner of the woods but I had quite a while to wait for Tosh on the other side. We could then follow tracks past Wellbury House, identified in the guide as a Jewish religious institution and this reminded me of a march past Carmel College on the Thames while doing the Ridgeway. On our right, at a cottage called Markhams, we noted two usual sights. The first was a large U.S. mailbox (design approved by the Postmaster General) and a chair full of apples – with an invitation for passers-by to help themselves. This we did as we continued along the roadway, Tosh managing to walk by our next well-marked turnoff without noticing.

We now had to use a field path to climb in a southwesterly direction toward a corner of a wood called Saddle Plantation. With the sun so low in the sky it seemed as much like 4:00 in the afternoon as 11:00 in the morning here. A series of tracks, accompanied by hedges, brought us into the precincts of the hamlet of Little Offley and after we had joined a paved roadway we could twist around and soon see Little Offley House, a late Tudor brick manor house. At a crossroads a woman, walking a Westie, came up behind us and asked why our boots weren’t muddier. (That was still to come.)

We now turned right, following trackways first southwest, then southeast. At the top of Clouds Hill we turned right on Honeysuckle Lane, a bridleway encased in hedgerows, and thus, heading due south, we were able to reach the A 505, a dual carriageway that required a careful crossing. A trackway headed off on the other side but I walked most of it alone, as Mrs. Lee was again seduced by sloes and rosehips and the occasional blackberry – which she consumed on the spot. This often reminded her of Dorothy’s passion for the fruit but my late wife was not the only ghost to make an appearance on today’s walk. Today was the anniversary of my mother’s birth and we were now only a few days from the fifth anniversary of Harold’s death.

I leaned up against a fence for five minutes or so, waiting for Tosh to catch up, and then we crossed another highway, the Luton Road. The guidebook points out that at this point we were only a third of a mile from the original Chiltern Way route (which we had already walked on our day out of Lilley) over on our right.

We passed some parked cars in a driveway and in the nearby house a dog began to bark in protest as we slowly left his territory to follow a track up alongside a field of corn. Our southerly progress over for a while, we then turned east to cross a series of farm fields as we at last drew closer to the village of Great Offley. Needless to say Tosh had been nagging me about our pub stop for some time (and I was hungry too). Thus it was very nice, at about 12:50, to step through the hedges and encounter the Red Lion’s friendly face. “Do you think they’ll make us take our boot off?” Tosh asked – receiving my usual reply – “Don’t ask them!”

A chap with too few teeth was standing out front smoking a cigarette and we had to endure a grilling on our adventure before entering the establishment and settling down for an hour-long rest. Tosh had sausage, new potatoes and veg (and a fresh empty sack for her fruit) and I remained loyal to cod and chips. Then we shared a treacle pudding and custard, used the loos and, shortly after 2:00, we were ready to resume our march. We had walked 6.2 miles and had 4.7 to go.

It wasn’t easy unkinking as we turned north on King’s Walden Road (and I had started the walk with a twinge at the top of my upper left leg) but we were soon back in rhythm as we began a directional repeat of the morning’s adventure: a long northeasterly trod followed by a long southerly one with a final easterly lap to conclude the day’s march. I had my camera out on a number of occasions as the scene continued to provide many autumnal delights.

We passed the churchyard and followed the outside edge of Botany Bay Plantation, then a track through Aldwick’s Plantation. Then, with views of Hitchin before us, we began another descent, soon finding Minsbury Plantation on our left. Tracks brought us down to a bend in a green lane, where we turned first right and then left on a more or less level track. Here I again lost sight of Tosh, who (re-armed with a new empty sack) began to pluck at the sloe bushes again. “Someone was here before me,” she said of one bush.” “That’s because you are sloe off the mark,” I suggested. I was suffering from an additional problem…my trousers again. Cinched to its tightest position the belt bit uncomfortably into my lunch; loosened even a single notch my pants, depressed by my knapsack, would begin to sag.

At the end of the track I reached a junction with Hoar Lane and sat down for a bit of a rest as I waited for my companion to catch up. She did so just as the first of a party of local people came up the hill. The woman discussed recipes for sloe gin with Tosh and noted that she was just this day re-homing the lovely black and white dog that she had on lead. “Of course she just rolled in a pile of horse poo,” the woman added, “no one told us about that at the rescue center.”

We now headed down Hoar Lane, resuming our southerly direction, encountering the “slow coaches” in this country party, including two pre-teen girls who looked like they’d much rather be doing something far less wholesome. We continued forward on a number of tracks at valley bottom, then turned half right near Offleyholes Farm to begin another long ascent where gates barred our way twice. The first time I succeeded in getting the gate open by kicking its bottom strut. The second time we puzzled over the complicated mechanism for some time before Tosh realized that, unusually, we were meant to pull the gate toward us, not away from us. We passed through an edge of Pinnacle Plantation and continued climbing along the eastern side of West Wood. (Only Bruins will understand why I was singing “Hail to Hills of Westwood” at this point.) West Wood, I later concluded, did serve as a milestone in my walking career – mile 4600.

Tosh got well ahead of me on this ascent and there was no way I could let her know that she had missed another turnoff – near the top of our climb a somewhat ambiguously sited waymark suggested we leave the wood’s edge to continue our way along a field path. But the newly ploughed field, with its sparse covering of green shoots, had no path imprinted on its surface at all and Tosh would have been most reluctant to cross a field of crops in this fashion under any circumstances. I continued forward along the edge of the woods and found her waiting for me at the top. There were lots of footpath signs and a gate nearby but no reference to The Chiltern Way I decided to use a crossing track to head east. I was searching for the line of the CW at the top of the ploughed field and I found it almost immediately. Thus we were able to continue our southerly march downhill and into the hamlet of Austage End. A stage victory.

We had reached that point where we now had only an easterly mile to complete. Increasingly this was agricultural territory as the route crossed more ploughed fields (though with signs of footpath use this time). Tosh missed one last turnoff as I called her back to climb some steps into a large field, with the path dropping down to a track ominously called Dead Woman’s Lane. Here we had a brief southerly jog before heading east and passing some brown cows as our route lead us through one last farmstead and on to Butcher’s Lane in our destination village, Preston. Tosh had been nagging me for the last hour on the subject of our proximity to Preston and I was now able to tell her that we had reached the last sentence in the guidebook. This didn’t mollify her since, even after the sentence had ended, we had to make our way forward across a village green in order to reach another Red Lion. As the rattling doors soon proved, however, this one was closed.

Of course Tosh had been saving up a last loo break for the pub and its closure caused considerable consternation. She argued that she would be too uncomfortable if she had to wait for long and so she went off to a corner of a nearby woods while I took the last of the day’s many pictures. Preston was a lovely and affluent village and the turning trees on the green made for a colorful sight in the fading light. It was 5:00 and we had walked 11 miles.

When Tosh returned we tried to use her mobile phone to call the cab driver who had delivered us to Pegsdon but her battery was flat and we used my mobile instead. Our driver promised to pick us up in fifteen to twenty minutes. I took myself off to the woods to repeat Tosh’s mission – was that a police van shooting by just as I was positioning myself against a fence? We sat on a picnic bench in front of the closed pub and I used a stick to scrape mud off my boots. It was getting chilly now and I put my scarf on.

A cab did pull up in 15 minutes, though our driver had sent a colleague, and we were soon speeding back to Hitchin. At the station we could see that a King’s Cross train was almost here and so we crossed under the railway line and climbed aboard immediately. It was a stopping train, and very crowded, but at least it was warm. I used my phone to advise Janet on my arrival time, to discuss dinner plans and dog feeding, and to offer lessons in how to summon the right TV signal. Tosh read the Evening Standard – which bore the sad news that one of architect Richard Roger’s son, Bo, had been found dead at 27. I had taught his older brother at the American School.

I said goodbye to Tosh in the underground caverns of King’s Cross, and headed for the Metropolitan Line. I didn’t have long to wait, but the rush hour trains were crowded and I didn’t get a seat until Paddington, after switching to the Bakerloo line at Baker Street. As I began my walk along Elgin Avenue I met up with Hanna, walking Yoyo and Claire with Panda and Oggy, and gave them a report on my day. At home Domino’s Pizza and Jack Daniels were followed by an early night – but I was sore and stiff and couldn’t find a comfortable position for my tired legs – because a certain Schnauzer wanted all of the bed for himself.

To continue with our next stage you need:

Day 18: Preston to Peter’s Green