October 18, 2007: Ewelme to Stokenchurch

Almost two months passed before Tosh and I were able to complete another section of the Chiltern Way – which we had last visited at the end of August in the Oxfordshire village of Ewelme. To reach Stokenchurch, in Buckinghamshire, would require an eleven and a half mile trek, with plenty of ups and downs, and so, once again, we could not wait for our various travel passes to apply; we would have to start at an earlier hour in order to get in our walk before losing the waning daylight.

Once again I was also the beneficiary of a ride to Paddington Station – as the generous Linda made her way through the tortuous traffic south of Maida Vale –after picking up Fritz for the day at 8:10. I bought a ticket for the 9:00 fast train to Didcot Parkway, something for lunch at M&S, and a bagel with cream cheese and a small cappuccino to take with me when I found my seat a few minutes later. The weather looked most promising outside and I felt sorry for all the business folk fussing over their laptops and mobile phones at the start of a work day.

My train arrived at 9:41 and I had a few minutes to wait around before Tosh arrived on a stopping train from Ealing Broadway. She had already lost her bottle of Orangina on a bench in an earlier station and now had to buy a substitute. Outside there was a long line of taxis and we conferred briefly with the chap at the head of this queue before getting in his car. He and his dispatcher then had a quarrel over where, precisely, Ewelme was, and we wore off. The route combined our previous cab ride form Wallingford with the bus journey from Ewelme, though in this case the route chosen also recapitulated our own road descent to this village. I was able to tell the driver to turn right when we reached the high street and a minute later I asked him to stop at the corner of Parsons Lane, where we got out. The ride had cost us £21 but it was worth it to be able to start walking at 10:25.

As I adjusted my pack I told Tosh that the last time we had stood on this corner was in June, 1997, when we were completing our tenth and final day on the old Chilterns Hundred route. This would ordinarily not have stirred her memory but in this case I was also able to remind her that there had been four of us then – including Harold and a cow, which had followed us for some distance along this road.

Now we headed uphill on Parson’s Lane, turning off on a flinty drive that lead us in our dominant direction for the day, east. I believe that we had been here once before but in error, as the Chilterns Hundred route headed north (not east) and I had to start all over again in 1997. Today we were on surer ground along a grassy track heading into the sunlight – I even put my sunglasses on. Over our left shoulder I could see the pig condominium that we had walked through the last time we were in Ewelme. The surfaces were often wet with dew today and it was chilly enough to produce steam from out mouths but there was no wind and it was comfortable enough for me to walk in just a flannel shirt and sweatshirt. I was still wearing my ancient, split boots but I had disdained tape today and I suffered no undue abrasion.

Tosh had promised not to slow us down with fruit picking, unless, perhaps, we passed some good rose hips, and sure enough, as our track descended to a paved road at Warren Bottom. She found such bushes and made a pause. A woman was walking a dog along the road but the latter was allowed to go free when she headed back to Ewelme on the route we had just used. Then, right behind her, there came a man with another dog on lead, though he remained on the road. In fact, the first five people we met today all had dogs with them. Tosh always paused to greet other walkers, everyone agreeing that we had all chosen a perfect day for a walk. Views were great in almost every direction, with fall colors shading the hillsides.

Tosh was filling her sack with rose hips and her hands were soon a mass of scratches. I had to wait for her at our next turnoff, a trackway that headed northwest and lead to a crossroads where a family, also with a dog, was advancing. I was trying to spot an 18^th Century obelisk in Britwell Park and the family was fretting over a lost car key. I could soon see my obelisk as we took a right turn on a crossing track and headed southeast toward Icknieldbank Plantation. We arrived at a parking lot and picnic area and this seemed a very familiar site to me – and so it should – for he had we had stopped to have our packed lunches here in 1997. The Chilterns Hundred heads north from this spot on the old Icknield Way but the Chiltern Way heads east through woodland and so we would now walk for some distance before encountering our old route again.

Woodland always presents route-finding problems and there would be a lot of woodland today. Fortunately, however, the route was well waymarked, not so much with signs on posts or fences but with white paint on trees. The arrows, of course, often referred to routes other than our own but today they often included the initials CW and even the local footpath numbers that are usually referred to in guidebooks but are rarely on display on the ground.

Our climb up to the top of Swyncombe Down was the first of fourteen ascents today, though this one was not as steep as some that were still to come. As we reached open country at the top we encountered wonderful views to the north and actually walked for a while atop the Danish Intrenchment, though soon this earthwork accompanied us on the right. When a second earthwork ascended from the valley on our left we continued forward, in shade now, continuing until we ran into a hillside in Dean Wood.

Here we began a brief steep climb again, turning south, crossing the Danish Intrenchment and emerging on an open hillside. Tosh started to follow the main track around to the left here but I reminded her that our route, essentially pathless, required a grassy descent with trees on our right and then another climb up to a gate at the hamlet of Swyncombe. Two lady walkers were heading our way, the first people we had met today without a dog.

We passed through the gate, crossed Church Lane, and descended Rectory Lane, circling the church itself and entering the churchyard. Tosh now spotted a bench in the sunlight so we sat down here and had the first installment of lunch – the clock having passed noon. I had bought two sandwiches at Paddington Station and I had half of a very rich one, a NY Deli pastrami with pickle – delicious. There were also some wonderful M&S chocolate covered toffees to suck on. Then we had a look at the interior of St. Botolph church, an eleventh century establishment much modernized and still in use, it would appear, from the listings on the hymn board.

It was not too easy making our escape from Swyncombe, but at last we figured out where we were to cross the access road to Swyncombe House itself and how to make our way up the hillside above it. I told Tosh that this would have been an especially difficult task without the guidebook, since the CW marker at the bottom seemed to point half right but the suggestion that we aim left of a lime tree and an elm stump required us to head half left. Tosh wanted to know what would happen when the elm stump had rotted away but I reassured her that the Chiltern Society would arrive to implant an artificial replacement.

At the top of the field we entered Church Wood and made our way forward to Church Lane again, turning right and approaching the village of Cookley Green. There was an irregularly shaped greensward here, a war memorial, and a woman with a map case who seemed to bolt as soon as she spotted us. We crossed the B481 and floundered around a bit looking for Law Lane (unmarked as such), our next eastern turnoff. There were some attractive cottages about in these Chiltern villages but on this entire day we never passed a public or commercial building of any sort.

Law Lane soon became nothing more than a narrow track descending rapidly to a valley bottom. Here a track headed south and I was able to tell Tosh that had we taken this fork we would soon have reached the spot we had descended to on the day we walked from Upper Maidensgrove on an earlier Chiltern Way outing. Unfortunately our route today required us to head steeply uphill on a new path, eventually reaching a road at Russell’s Water. Had we enjoyed more time, light and energy we could have walked south on this road to the Five Horseshoes but we would now have to content ourselves with the pub sign, one that used to advertise the long defunct local hostelry but which now merely advertised the name of the village.

We walked around a duck pond and made our way forward past some cottages and entered a large field where we passed along the left edge of woods. There was some ambiguity about the correct escape from this open space, since there were several inviting paths but I was using my compass repeatedly on this day (and actually clutching the pages of the guide book in my hand since sticking them in my map case was bothersome) and I chose the left-hand path; this proved to be correct and lead us steeply downhill to a road, the B480.

Here we had to head mostly west until we arrived, in a few hundred yards, at a collection of houses in Pishill Bottom. We climbed over a stile and through the yard of Grove Farm and then headed steeply uphill into Shambridge Wood. I’m afraid that the ascents were getting more protracted hereabouts and my legs were really beginning to protest. My lungs protested too but I never had to rest for long before starting forward again. The lively woman in front of me seemed to suffer no such setbacks and attributed her success to climbing all those steps in Green Park tube station.

White arrows on trees lead us down to a valley bottom and up into Greenfield Wood. Up and down we went, pausing once, when we found some convenient logs to sit on, for a second round of lunch. After an uphill stint in College Wood we actually joined ranks with the Oxfordshire Way for a while. Pheasants were everywhere today, chuckling and screaming, and their feathers were often on the footpath. One ended up in Tosh’s Hell’s Canyon baseball cap.

Some more open country accompanied our crossing of Hollandridge Lane. Then we had woodland on our right for a while before turning north to enter Fire Wood itself. Our track followed a valley bottom for a while and we continued on this track once we were out in the open, climbing at a fairly easy angle between bare fields. Tosh was well ahead of me here and, as has happened so often in our adventures, she missed a waymarked turnoff on a post and continued straight ahead up the track. When I reached this spot myself I pulled out my whistle and gave a mighty blast. The lady, however, continued forward to a road at the top and several more whistle blasts and shouts proved unavailing.

I assumed that I would have to go in pursuit but at last she had a peek downhill again and I was able to wave her back. She told me that she had heard my whistle and had thought to herself, “Isn’t that just like Anthony’s?” but had never thought that it could possibly be intended for her. Promising never to ignore a similar blast in the future, she and I now cut a brief corner in order to enter the backyards of some cottages at Northend, passing between two to emerge onto Northend Common and on to a road.

More woodland followed, Blackmoor Wood, and a descent to New Gardens Farm, where a brick wall hid a ha-ha. We followed level tracks for a while as we neared the Wormsley Valley but when we reached the outskirts of the Wormsely Estate (sold in 1984 to one of John Paul Getty, Jr.’s companies) I again began to sense that we were approaching familiar ground. This was the same spot where the lady in the land rover had looked at our party with undisguised suspicion in 1997. We were again retracing our own steps and continued to do so, with minor variations, all the way to the end of today’s march.

We crossed over a field from one road to the next and then faced a very steep climb uphill, following the edges of a woodland, then entering same for a sharply angled rise up to a sunken road. I had to sit down on a mossy log for a breather but the seat of my walking trousers was soon damp. Turning right on the sunken road we continued in gathering gloom almost out to the road at Ibstone. The Chiltern Way makes a puritanical northern turn before doing this, however, keeping walkers off the road (and out of the unseen Fox pub), a gesture that not only deprives thirsty walkers of a watering hole but plunges them into a boggy alternative to the sound footing of the road.

Soon we had reached the latter anyway, travelling north a short distance before leaving Ibstone to plunge into dark woodland again in Hartmoor Wood. I was particularly grateful for the white arrows on the trees here for the beech leaves had obscured any evidence of an actual footpath and, like flags on a slalom course, the arrows provided us with a way forward. It was, however, very steep and slippery and not a comfortable descent at all.

I remembered that I had some difficulty figuring out how to continue from the valley bottom in 1997 but today this was clear enough and we were soon on our next-to-last ascent, climbing steeply along the side of a wood, then entering it to emerge in the fields of Studridge Farm. Some magnificent horses were loose here and they were quite interested in us, too interested from my perspective, for they kept charging up right behind us, veering off only at the last second and soon entering another field. I was quite happy to climb a stile into the farm road.

I made the mistake of reading aloud a passage about fruit bushes lining this road and Tosh was soon helping herself. She had a pear in her hand as we left the road and started across some grassy fields, with no evidence of path, guided by hints in the book on copses and trees. Three of the latter guarded a stile into a field where we could head steeply downhill. For the last few minutes we had the roar of the M40 instead of the cries of the pheasants and, indeed, we could see a line of lorries inching northward in the fading light.

What we could not see, screened by the motorway, was our village. But after passing though Bissonhill Shaw, a small copse, enduring the ripe smells of Coopers Court Farm, and hopping our last stiles, we reached an access road under the motorway and after a short and final ascent entered Stokenchurch. I knew that at the end of Coopers Court Road we would reach a well-remembered green and that on our left would be the Fleur de Lis pub. And there it was. “I pronounce this walk well and truly over,” I said as we entered the friendly confines of what Tosh characterized as a very male pub. It was 5:57. In 1997, when our walk began in Nuffield, it too had begun at 10:25 and ended at 6:00, but we had walked an extra mile and a half then: there had been far less up and down. “We timed that just right,” I said; the darkness was descending outside.

Tosh ordered a bitter shandy for herself and a gin and tonic for me. She also got the number of a cab firm in High Wycombe and summoned a taxi. The latter was promised in ten minutes but it was more like twenty-five. This gave both of us time to squeeze past the pool table on our way to the loos. A girl at the bar could not believe that we had walked all the way from Ewelme.

A van was soon waiting for us outside. I drew Tosh’s attention to the last specks of vivid color in the western sky and we were soon heading into the traffic, the din of a U.S. style radio station blasting us with the commercial opportunities of South Buckinghamshire. When we reached the rail station I was surprised that our Indian driver asked only for £10 ­– ten years ago we had been charged £12.

Now we were able to use our Freedom Passes and Senior Rail Cards and this meant that the return journey to Marylebone Station cost only £3 and change. I used my mobile phone to call Linda but Rob now insisted on meeting me at Marylebone, which we reached after about forty minutes. In all my time in London I don’t ever remember someone picking me up at the end of a walk, but my tired legs were grateful now. Fritz too had just completed an exhausting outing in Regents Park; he hardly raised a head from the back seat.

I finished a second sandwich and some crisps for my tea and had an early night but I didn’t sleep that well, reliving every step and feeling the aches and pains of eleven and a half miles of strenuous walking. The next day I took two naps, but this strange sleep schedule did not diminish the satisfaction I felt over such a glorious day of walking.

To continue with our next stage you need:

Day 9: Stokenchurch to Lacey Green