November 5, 2005: Chorleywood West to Penn
The church at Chalfont St. Giles
Having failed to find an appropriate day for a second walk on The Chiltern Way for some time, the Lees and I at last agreed to take a chance on a changeable Saturday – with some rain predicted for the afternoon. We had lost all connection with summer time since our last walk – and so we needed an early start from the Chorleywood station on the Metropolitan Line.
I left the house at about 7:30 on a chilly but sunny morning and took the Bakerloo Line to Baker Street where, after some ambiguity about which platform to use, I had only a short wait before stepping aboard an Amersham train. I had told the Lees that I would meet them on the Chorleywood platform at 8:30 and this is exactly when I arrived – having used some of the journey time to consume a tuna and sweet corn baguette purchased trackside at Baker Street. I could see Harold peering across the tracks from the waiting room opposite so I tunneled under the line and used my Freedom Pass to re-enter the station so that I could use the loos. The Lees had forgotten that their own passes entitled them to free travel at any time on the weekend and they had paid full fares to get to Chorleywood.
I remembered that there was a taxi kiosk adjacent to the station and I now proposed that we get a taxi to take us back up the hill to the corner of Shires and Chalfont Lanes – where we had broken off the walk last time. This saved six tenths of a mile (well worth the three quid fare) and allowed us to get started at 8:50. Our driver had seemed reluctant to leave the warm confines of his office, where he was reading his newspaper, but he was cheery enough now. “See you soon,” he said – a remark which, taken in the context of our intentions, seemed ominous.
Again I had torn out the relevant pages from the earlier edition of Nick Moon’s guidebook and I was carrying these as well as two old OS maps in my map case. Instructions were good during the morning session and we were soon leaving suburbia behind us as we headed west on Old Shire Lane. The tarmac gave out and we followed bridleways along the edge of Philipshill Wood, grateful for any moments in the sun on a morning in which our breath continued to produce steam for some time. The night before we had all attended a colleague’s seventieth birthday party and so we spent much of this early time comparing notes.
Along the borders of the autumnal woodland the path descended – locals were out walking their dogs here and at many other points along the route today. We descended into a little valley bottom and I remembered that, while walking A Chilterns Hundred in 1994, there had been some difficulty in climbing the hill opposite and that some improvising had been necessary. Today, however, Moon’s instructions were easy to follow here and we passed through a squeeze stile and followed a path to the right, keeping level with an accompanying bit of barbed wire until the path made an uphill turn and we began our climb. I wondered if we were actually following our own footsteps here but I think that back then we had emerged closer to the buildings of the Open Air Museum than today – when we skirted the park and reached roadway between the entrance to the local university and a lodge house.
I was certain we had been here before but I couldn’t recall if the descent to Chalfont St. Giles, which had us cross Gorelands Lane and pass along a muddy bridleway through a strip of woodland, was the same one used on the Chilterns Hundred. We emerged onto a road next to a handsome seventeenth century structure, Ashwell’s Farm, then climbed a stile for a series of field crossings as we lost altitude to reach the A413. Here we were near the valley bottom, Misbourne meadows, and our path lead us on around the St. Giles church and so through an archway onto the main street of Chalfont St. Giles. It was 10:30.
I proposed a stop for refreshments and as we searched our immediate environment I spotted the sign “Coffee Morning” in front of a kind or refectory belonging to the church itself. Tosh needed no further encouragement and went in to place our orders while I entered the civic loos next door. When I joined the Lees Tosh had ordered not only three coffees with biscuits but three sausage rolls – which were just being warmed up in the microwave. This is not a food I would normally have chosen at this hour of the morning but I could hardly refuse – seeing the joy of the church ladies in finding these unexpected customers. We sat down among the milling faithful as they examined bric-a-brac on tables – and we had a nice rest. Then the Lees went next door to the loos and we were off.
Our route disdained further progress on the main street, which we had used to reach Milton’s cottage eleven years earlier, and instead kept to the valley bottom in a northwesterly direction, first on roadway, then track, then trail – with all the signs of urban decay represented in various piles of litter (including a moss-covered tennis shoe) gradually being left behind. We crossed Mill Lane and continued forward in the company of the South Bucks Way past Misbourne Farm. Shortly after this landmark, however, the route turned southwest and we began to climb uphill over grass and through hedges. It seemed to me that much of the rest of the day was a succession of level and uphill stretches – though there must have been some downhill too. These are the Chilterns, after all, and one could not expect level progress for long.
Scrubland and woods gave us a feeling of country isolation but there were obvious signs of the life around us as well – including a gravel drive at Hill Farm, where we left a road behind to reach a crest with great views to the south of Chalfont St. Giles and the London conurbation. We soon reached Bottrells Lane and walked in open country, with great views to the north, on wide paths through fields of some winter crop over several hillocks and past a redundant stile that made a good landmark. Hidden between us and distant views of Coleshill was Bottom House Farm Lane, which we reached after dropping down a few steps. There hadn’t been a car on its surface in all the time that we were up top and it was somewhat of a surprise to discover a road here at all.
Accompanied by a series of hedges we plodded steadily forward along muddy surfaces, views of a windmill at Coleshill urging us forward. There were also signs of agricultural life as we worked our way past Brentford Grange Farm and through some woodland and thus out to the A335. This was a busy stretch of roadway but we scrambled across it successfully for more progress along hedges – views of Coleshill House, a handsome Eighteenth Century property, now also visible. Our path lead us around the edge of Herts Wood and onto a green lane where we could see cars and rubbish bins and the back of a solid structure on our left. In this way, at 12:10, we arrived at our noontime pub, the Red Lion in Coleshill. We had walked 6.4 miles.
Our muddy boots had to be left behind as we entered the precincts of the local hostelry so it was in stockings that we drank our pints and ate our meal. The Lees had cheese omelets and I had sausage and mash. Service was very prompt and we were right on time. Darts fixtures seemed to be the only topic of conversation at the bar – which was soon crowded with locals who had come in for their Saturday lunch. One arriving group broke the news to us, however, that it had started to rain!
Outside we put on our rain gear – an easier process than usual since we had no boots on yet, though I had brought with me for the first time the new rain trousers I had purchased in Grasmere the previous June – and these have a leg zipper that is so generous that I would have had no trouble getting them on over boots. The rain was very light and only intermittent though we kept on this outer layer for the rest of the afternoon. I was having a lot of trouble now keeping my boot laces tied (they can easily slip out of the metal eyes) and frequently I ended up with muddy hands after refastening them – when I could find a log or some other raised elevation to rest my foot on.
We crossed through the rest of Coleshill village at 1:00 and continued our westerly trod along lanes and gravel tracks and through woodland and over fields with the usual accompaniment of hedges. After a mile we emerged onto a street called The Hill opposite a Methodist chapel in the well pub-licized village of Winchmore Hill. On the green the local football team was warming up for a match and villagers were bringing all their garden refuse in cars to add to a huge bonfire that would be ignited a few hours later. The Lees sniffed at this – feeling that the greenery would only produce smoke – but I had another problem… finding the continuation of the Chiltern Way.
Moon has us crossing “the priority road” – a term unknown to me and, in any circumstances, likely to make sense only to those in motor vehicles. Then he asks us to turn right onto path P8 (though none of these local footpaths had signs confirming their identities as such). A compass bearing would have been very useful here but between the bonfire, the football players and several rival paths crossing the green we couldn’t figure out where to go next. I wandered up the west side of the field (not far enough, it turned out) and then we tried our luck on a path that crossed the bottom of the green and headed in a southwesterly direction.
We wound between houses, crossed a road that I took to be Horsemoor Lane, and followed a field path toward some woods. But here we encountered the sounds of shotguns firing sporadically in front of us and the sight of a chap beating the air with a white flag. Coming toward us as well was a couple we had seen in our pub and I stopped them to ask about directions to Penn, our next village. They were in retreat from the shooters below us and they knew where we had gone wrong on the Winchmore Hill green. In fact I think we would have been okay had we persisted in our forward direction or turned north on Horesemore Lane at this point, but I didn’t have an OS map that covered this part of the world and I needed to be certain that we were on the CW again – so we decided to retreat all the way to our village and try again.
When we reached the village the cars were still arriving with more cuttings for the bonfire and the game itself was now in progress. But we asked a linesman about the route and he sent us along the touchline and even onto the field of play for a few steps as we inched along a large holly bush that rounded a corner and at last revealed a hidden stile we had missed earlier. We had walked an extra mile and exhausted a good deal of precious daylight. Tosh was already talking about calling it a day when we at last reached the village of Penn.
We followed a raised path over a field to a pond next to Horsemore Lane. Then we crunched through some woodland and reached a paved road that serves Penn House, where we turned south. Almost immediately we were under fire again, with a lad with a white flag standing in the middle of the road – trying to launch pheasants by whistling this object through the wind. Our presence set up an alarm among the hunting fraternity and there were shouted conversations about what to do with us. One chap began to suggest that we could reach our destination by taking an alternative path, but I refused – he hadn’t even asked us where we were going and I had had enough of alternatives for one afternoon. So the hunters had to put up their weapons for two minutes as we continued down the road and turned right into Branches Wood. There were, in fact, quite a few pheasants about and we congratulated ourselves on having saved several of them from the buckshot. The shoot was, I must say, an entirely new form of obstruction (see my A Walker’s Alphabet), and our progress toward the A40 in Loudwater, our destination for the day, had been compromised again. It was at this point that I told Tosh that I would consent to calling it a day in Penn but that I didn’t want to hear any complaints about having to do a thirteen mile stretch next time. She agreed to this – and began complaining about having to do a thirteen mile stretch almost immediately.
We left the woods behind us and descended to a road in Penn Bottom, turning left onto Crown Lane and passing Church Knoll with its sarsen stones. I must say that the route description did not seem to compute with the footways on offer here but there were plenty of CW signs about, including one which the Lees missed as we climbed a hill toward Penn village itself. I had to call them back for a little walking in a woods and then we emerged onto our last grassy, muddy hill of the day, plodding uphill to emerge onto the B474 on the west side of Penn.
I made a careful note of what landmark to look for when we returned to this spot and then we headed east along the highway, looking for the Crown, the village pub from which I planned to call a taxi. The sun was trying to come out again as we reached our goal. It was 3:30 and with only an hour’s daylight left (and two and a half miles still to go) it seemed the wise thing to call a halt here. We had walked ten and a half miles.
We didn’t have to take our boots off this time and we settled down to drinks (I had a vodka and orange) while I attempted to get a signal on Dorothy’s mobile phone. I failed and asked for help from an efficient and accommodating barmaid, who called a taxi for us, told us how long it would be before it arrived, quoted the price we would have to pay to get to High Wycombe and came to fetch us, ten minutes later, when it arrived. In the interim I had changed out of all my rain gear and used the loos. After a day spent slipping around in the mud I was quite tired.
We passed through the village of Hazlemere on our journey to the train station at High Wycombe, where we were able to use our senior rail passes and our Freedom Passes to buy cheap tickets to London. There was a long walk under the tracks to reach the southbound platform and some ambiguity over which train the Lees should take to get into the tube system. My choice was simpler since there was a train arriving that would take me nonstop to Marylebone. One would have been happier with the service of Chiltern Railways if the train in question were not running 73 minutes late!
I left the Lees on the platform and headed south in complete darkness now. I was able to reach Dorothy on the phone now and I was home shortly before 6:00 after a very eventful outing. Within a day I had figured out how to divide the next stage of 13.2 miles into two days of much more manageable distance.
To continue with our next stage you need: