April 22, 2006: Penn to Marlow

Almost half a year passed before we were able to return to the Chiltern Way; the Lees had done no walking in the interim and I had walked only once (on March 29), along the Thames with my childhood friend Richard Binggeli. Tosh had given me four days to choose from this week and I had nominated Saturday – which seemed to the only day during which no moisture was predicted. That explains why we had agreed to meet on a sunny weekend morning in Marylebone Station.

This was easy for me to reach. I left the house shortly after 8:00 (my dog Fritz extremely disappointed at my departure) and headed for the tube station. It was lovely out and I was wearing no jacket, just a green sweatshirt over my flannel shirt. The lines were slow moving at the ticket booth but, producing both my Freedom Pass and my Senior Rail Card, I was able to purchase a single for High Wycombe for less that four pounds. The Lees arrived at 8:40 and they joined two lines to repeat the process.

Then followed the often complex process of purchasing morning coffee and snacks. Harold and Tosh never fail to provide a comic moment on such occasions. Tosh is always very bossy and Harold overly reticent and the upshot was that today he wanted a cappuccino and an apple turnover and she ordered him a coffee Americano and a croissant. Then after she had at last asked him if this was correct she tried to reorder – but it was too late. Everyone used the loos and then we took seats aboard our waiting train. I brought them up to date on all the arrangements I had made for our June walk in Lakeland while we sipped our drinks and showered our seats with pastry crumbs.

We arrived in High Wycombe at about 10:40 (where they actually collected our tickets for once) and where we used a second set of loos. I spotted a caravan of waiting taxis and we were soon aboard a Neon Taxi and our way back to Penn, where we had broken off our walk on a muddy November afternoon. Our driver was an accommodating Asian chap – just as well because it wasn’t too easy to find our spot on the west side of the village. Part of the confusion came because our arrival in Penn was announced by this chap when we were only in Tylers Green and, thinking we had passed our spot by, we turned around to hunt again for the Chiltern Way crossing on the west side of the wrong town! A friendly local asked where we were headed and I fished the map out of the trunk and in this fashion we were launched again in the right direction and this time I located Grove’s Barn on the B474 and the continuation of our route. I don’t think our driver had much confidence in our abilities as walkers (or navigators) and he handed me his card, to be used if needed. It was 10:10.

Tosh wanted us to use a driveway into Oakmead House next door but I assured her that we needed to follow a green lane ­– which lead downhill and into woodland. We could tell already what a splendid day we had picked for our walk, warm and sunny, but with a crisp tang still in the air. It was also much drier underfoot (dire predictions of drought these days) and I noticed, after we had passed a construction site on which someone was building a new brick pile, that there was practically no water in Stump Well pond. We passed through the woodland and out into open grassy country, where we were directed to climb past an oak tree on our left. I must say that the route was well waymarked today and that Moon’s instructions were also extremely useful. I also paid more attention to his maps than last time (when we got lost) – there was to be no sequel to this incident this time.

We climbed a stile at the top of our hill and reached a gravel drive out to Beacon Hill, a community we did not actually visit – having to make a sharp left turn on this access road and turning in front of a cottage to walk between hedges out to a field with great views of Penn church over on our left. Woodland was on our right and ahead of us as well, a stile soon putting inside the woods – with no evidence of bluebells yet. Once emerged we followed another hedge in a southerly direction to a wood called Coppice Hoop. It wasn’t always easy to guess which was the dominant path in these woods but we must have guessed right for here too we emerged at last from the trees and headed downhill to a stile leading to an ancient bridleway. We crossed this and had a bit of steep uphill on the opposite side, soon reaching the edges of an extensive golf course.

From the top of this prospect we could see the Wye Valley below us, even the viaduct of the railway into High Wycombe itself – but there were soon route finding problems. I think I should have headed forward and straight down the hill but unfortunately the waymark post had fallen on its back and I could no longer figure out which direction to take next. We tried a short diversion to the right and then, since I could see the clubhouse below, we used a gravel track to make our descent in its direction, golf balls whistling overhead. When we reached the clubhouse parking lot I found a CW arrow pointing uphill and so we duly followed this past a swarm of teeing golfers but when we had practically retraced ours footsteps I finally realized that we were following the Chiltern Way eastbound and that we needed to be back at the parking lot. Here I discovered on another side of the waymark post a westward pointing arrow – and so we were at last able to leave the links behind.

We were provided with our own bridle path at first and then the pavements of an access road past houses whose front yards faced the terraced hillside of the golf course on our left. The spring flowers in these yards were resplendent and the Lees kept up their old habit of comparing these success stories with their own valiant efforts in Acton. When we reached Robinson Road we made a half right through woodland and took a tunnel under the railway viaduct. A concrete road now led us downhill toward a green on the A40 in Loudwater. Moon mentions cherry trees in blossom on this green and I suggested that we might be in luck at this time of year. We were – the trees were blossoming in glorious profusion.

This is the spot we had hoped to reach at the end of our previous, somewhat abbreviated walk, but the last bits would almost have been in darkness so I was glad we had waited. Later, when I was recording everyone’s statistics for this day, I noticed that by reaching Loudwater Tosh had completed 2500 miles of British footpaths! That lady was planning on honouring me later this year when I reached my day 365 and (perhaps) my mile 4000. Today was my day 362.

Not far from the green was a traffic signal and this made our passage over the busy A40 simple. We entered Loudwater (mills, offices and houses) and passed over a lovely branch of the River Wye. Here we turned right along the riverbank to emerge onto a huge recreation ground, King’s Mead. There were no loos in sight so Tosh snuck behind some bushes in a corner while Harold and I waited at the edges of the grass. Then I lead us across the corner of a field, searching for a second footbridge over the lesser Wye and then across Kingsmead Road as we headed uphill to walk on the inside edge of a woodland.

I paused for a pee on this steep stretch, telling the Lees to wait for me at the entrance to a tunnel under the M40. Surprisingly, this long dark passage was also uphill. I told the others that I felt I needed to take my sunglasses off  here – and I wasn’t wearing any. It was truly eerie to be walking without being able to see where your feet were but eventually things brightened a bit and we climbed some steps back into the light on the opposite side.

We headed north along the edge of the motorway and then turned our back on this artery with a left turn. I must say the next section was a little hard to follow. Woodland was on our left for only a short time, I never saw a branching path into the woods as promised, and a stile bearing a CW arrow seemed abandoned on our left with no path up to it. We climbed it nevertheless and found an advertised macadam path into more woodland (where a family with a gigantic smiling Staffie was just emerging). Things were not well waymarked inside but I compounded the difficulty by assuming that the black patch on Moon’s map was woodland (when, in fact it was housing). Anyway the route I chose, more or less in the right direction around the outer edge of Oak Wood, was quite pleasant – and eventually we were reunited with the official path, which followed behind garden fences down to Heath End Road at Flackwell Heath.

We crossed to the other side of this road and headed west for 300 yards and then left down a narrow gap between hedge and fence. Soon we were back in open country, heading due south along grassy paths and bridleways into a grassy valley that contained our noontime village, Sheepridge. Naturally Tosh had been agitating for definitive information on our promised pub and I was now able to suggest that the rooftops of the buildings on our right might shelter the very spot itself. Sure enough, as we reached Sheepridge Lane we could see cars parked out in front of our hostelry, The Crooked Billet. It was 12:40 and we had walked half our distance for the day, that is four and a half miles.

I lead a charge into the bar and we ordered drinks (Tosh a pint of bitter shandy, Harold and I pints of Stella) and then food. The Lees selected a nice table under a canopy in the front garden and here we had a good view of the English relaxing on a warm spring afternoon. One lady quizzed me about our walk. Our food was not long in coming, I had scampi, chips and peas while Tosh had an egg and cress sandwich and Harold a smoked salmon one. The food was very good – the scampi, for instance, quite tender and not overbattered. Having ordered more abstemiously than I had the Lees now reversed positions and ordered gooey desserts to go with their coffee. Tosh had a sticky toffee pudding and Harold apple crumble with vanilla ice cream. We tried to figure out what a crooked billet was but I had to consult my dictionary later in the day – a billet being, in this case, a “thick stick of wood, especially one for fuel.” Indeed this explains why a jointed log was nailed (not painted) onto the pub sign.

After an hour or so (and another visit to the loos) we resumed our walk, though this time I tucked my sweatshirt into my pack. Tosh complimented me on my purple flannel shirt and I told her that it was the only garment made by Ralph Lauren without a logo (which I won’t wear) – logoless in this case because the shirt has no pocket to support such a design.

Our route tunred uphill just beyond the pub and then followed hedgerows west before dropping down for a path through Bloom Wood, our most extensive period of woodland walking. We had a steady climb now, not so easy after lunch, but we all seemed to be doing well. I had plenty of puff and I wasn’t at all bothered by friction on the soles of my feet – as I had been a few weeks earlier. We had to follow Moon’s instructions carefully, since there were so many crossing tracks, but all went well and, after circumventing a rare puddle on one of these tracks, we reached the high point of our climb and began a very steep descent. We edged down very carefully and reached Winchbottom Lane where we turned left – soon passing a slaughtered pheasant in the roadway. There followed a discussion on the origins of this colorful tragedy. There were a lot of shotgun shells about on this day but these feathers looked like roadkill.

Tosh is always very nervous on such roads and we did feel a bit vulnerable when cars approached us at speed, but after a third of a mile we were able to escape through a gate. There were people here, including a young girl leading a horse, and her dad warned us that we now had another steep stretch ahead of us. This we could see and up we went into Horton Wood, emerging on the other side on Monkton Lane.

It is possible for the foolhardy to head directly westward over a stile and onto the A404 motorway but the CW had been designed to avoid this hazard and so we turned left on Monkton Lane for a quarter of a mile, following this roadway under the motorway and thus reaching the other side safely. Moon suggests here that the alternative route resumes at a right hand bend of the road (it is actually a left hand bend, I think) but his maps were more reliable and we were soon heading north on gravel surfaces, turning left to dodge behind a gas works fence and resume our westerly trod. The farmer had left a convenient grassy surface at the edge of two ploughed fields and thus at 2:50 we reached the village of Burroughs Grove.

A road led up to a junction with another highway and here, at a spot where we had to abandon the Chiltern Way for the day, we found the Three Horseshoes pub. I was aiming now for the 4:09 train from Marlow but I suggested that there was time for a ten-minute pit stop and soon we were sitting down over our Cokes with ice and lemon. One more visit to the loos followed and, with an hour to go, we started off on the almost two mile march to the station. The Chiltern Way rarely visits sites with train or tube stations and if taxis are not to be used then some off-route walking may be necessary – and so it was today.

Fortunately there were paths on both sides of the roadway, though this didn’t stop Tosh from feeling menaced at every moment. She and and I quarrelled over whether we were looking at an orchid or a hyacinth sprouting on the verge but when she showed me more of the same plant in the gardens of Marlow I agreed she was right about the hyacinths. After fifteen minutes we reached a road junction and, as our road swept up to the right, we encountered real pavement – which made the rest of the journey very pleasant indeed. I was following our progress on faithful old Landranger Sheet 175 and this was quite adequate for our present purposes.

We passed dozens of front yards and Tosh even told one lady who was labouring over her trimming, “Looks good!” We reached the main road into Marlow and continued forward, dodging the traffic as we did so, and down a street leading to Station Road. This was familiar territory for us (I had even parked my car nearby once) and at 3:52 we arrived at the station, where a lot of people trippers were gathered, waiting for the train. I picked up some abandoned taxi cards – in anticipation of our next outing hereabouts – and we climbed aboard the train when it pulled in.

I was able to tell the conductor where our Freedom Passes kicked in (West Drayton) and we purchased tickets, this time for slightly more than four pounds. At Bourne End the train reverses directions and then slides down among Thameside scenes to Maidenhead, where we had only two minutes on the platform before boarding a Paddington-bound successor. The Lees got off at Ealing Broadway where I used the mobile phone to give Dorothy an e.t.a. I was beginning to suffer a build-up of trail gas and so I was glad to get home, shortly before 6:00, at the end of a very lovely nine-mile day.

To continue with our next stage you need:

Day 4: Marlow to Hambleden