Walk 6: Not actually a country walk

Date: Sunday 27th February
Distance: not sure (any ideas much appreciated - really ought to dig out the pedometer languishing in the kitchen drawer)
Route: Holland Park station to the Royal Festival Hall via various parks, palaces and cultural venues

OK, so the first thing to say is that - I know, I know - this walk doesn't really conform to the rules of the blog. It's not in the country, it's not following a walk from a guidebook and I don't actually know how far it is. But if you find yourself hankering after a lie-in on a Sunday and in need of a leisurely stroll that is reachable by tube, this one is a good (if made-up on the spot) option. It's also good if you have (energetic) friends visiting who fancy a bit of London sightseeing, with the odd pelican thrown in. And of course you end up at the Royal Festival Hall, so you can have a beer at the end too!

So, this is how it goes:
Take the Central line to Holland Park, turn right out of the station and walk up the hill into Notting Hill, then keep heading straight on and cross the road into Hyde Park/ Kensington Gardens. Walk parallel to the road for a short distance then head off diagonally right, vaguely towards Hyde Park Corner. There are quite a few different paths and it doesn't really matter which way you go, as long as Kensington Palace is behind you, the Royal Albert Hall and the spectacularly OTT Albert Memorial are to your right and (at the minute) you get to see some of Anish Kapoor's big metal statues (hence the "sculpture can pose a hazard at certain times of the day" sign).

Once you get near to the Serpentine Gallery you can of course stop and look at some art or you can just keep going alongside the Serpentine (or stop at the Lido Cafe). Obviously, if you are a big Princess Di fan you can go and fall over in her Memorial Fountain (weather permitting). Once you get to the end of the Serpentine head right-ish, to come out at Hyde Park Corner near the Wellington Arch. Cross over the road, go through the arch and through into the next lot of park to come out near Buck Pal. Marvel at the horrible architecture, the statue of Queen Victoria and cross the Mall to go into Green Park, then continue to go diagonally rightish, crossing a footbridge that gives you a very touristy view of the Queen's house and carrying on to walk past the aforementioned random pelicans (thanks to George III, apparently). This brings you out to the right of Horse Guards, near Churchill's War Rooms. If you go up the stairs near the entrance to the War Rooms there is a handy (very quiet) cut-through to Whitehall, which takes you past the Foreign & Commonwealth Office on the left and the Treasury on the right.

Once on Whitehall take a right to head towards Westminster Abbey etc, then left at the end to go past the Palace of Westminster, Big Ben and Boadicea. The options are to cross the bridge and run the gauntlet of mime artists around the London Eye en route to the Royal Festival Hall or to stay on the more sedate north bank and walk along the Embankment then across the Jubilee bridge, with a view along the Thames.

And then you are at the Festival Hall and you can drink, eat (suspiciously brown mushroom stew) or go and look at whatever random cultural things are happening at this fantastic institution. I'm not sure how they are going to better last year's science event (I know that sounds weird but download the stellarium from http://www.stellarium.org/ and see if you disagree!) but I am going to keep going back just in case they do. And I urge everyone else to, too!

Then finally, when you are refreshed and have dried off a bit from the rubbish rainy weather, you can cross the river again on the Jubilee Bridge looking down-river towards St Paul's for one of the best views in London. Not that I have a taken a photo of it, of course because a) that would be too touristy and b) it was still raining yesterday. But the sun will be shining when you walk it, I'm sure.

Walk 5: Wendover Circular via Chequers

Date: Saturday 12th February
Route: Wendover Circular - Ridgeway/ North Bucks Way/ Aylesbury Ring
Distance: 9.7 miles

Given the dire weather forecast for Sunday, we sacrificed our Saturday morning lie-in for the chance of getting out into the sunshine.

This is a walk that we first did last year, it's number 26 in the Rough Guide to Walks in London and Southeast England and it has all the right ingredients for a good walk i.e.:
- steep bits out of the way early on
- pub lunch more than half way round, followed by nice easy walk back
- fantastic views across the countryside
- easy to get to (either by car or train)
- very difficult to get lost as it is all on well-defined and well-used paths

The walk starts and ends in Wendover, a pretty town near Aylesbury (see half-timbered thatched cottages above) - 5 minutes out of town and you are on the Ridgeway National Trail, which goes for 87 miles from Ivinghoe Beacon near Tring (not far from Wendover and another favourite walk) all the way to Overton Hill near Avebury in Wiltshire.

The chalky path is very well signposted (and is thought to have been in use since prehistoric times) - the only disadvantage is that at this time of year it can get very muddy - looking forward to coming back to walk it again when the ground has dried out a bit!

The path goes upward (gently) at the start, so you soon come out to fantastic views across the countryside, with a couple of key landmarks - the Boer War Memorial at the top of Coombe Hill, closely followed by the first glimpse of Chequers, the PM's country retreat. Seeing all the beautiful trees on the Chequers Estate does of course make you wonder if they too will be part of the proposed forestry sell-off, on which the government is now hastily back-tracking!

The walk goes through woodland, over Chequers' drive and round the side and back, across green fields and down to the village of Great Kimble, to the Bernard Arms for lunch and press cuttings about Boris Yeltsin's surprise visit some years ago.

After lunch it's on to the Aylesbury Ring, which is a fairly flat path over fields that goes all the way back to Wendover, passing the spooky Victorian church on the hill at Ellesborough and the man-made hill of Cymbeline's Mount, the motte of an old medieval castle.

Nice easy walk for a spring day, probably better if you don't have a kilo of mud attached to the bottom of each boot. Also good if you feel like shouting anti-government slogans out loud and shaking your fist at Chequers' CCTV cameras (make sure you keep to the paths, though!).

Walk 4: Marlow Circular via Hambleden

Date: Sunday 6th February

Route: Marlow Circular via Hambleden

Distance: 12.1 miles

No walking last week, due to being up North, so have been looking forward to today's walk for a couple of weeks. This is another tried and tested favourite - number 8 in the Time Out Book of Country Walks Volume 2. Even though it is 12 miles long, there are only three uphill stretches and a big chunk of Thames Path, which is very easy flat walking.

If you follow the book, the walk starts and end in Marlow, which has a very handy car park in the town centre (from which there is a path straight down to the river), not to mention loads of shops, pubs, Pizza Express etc. We've done this a few times and found that we always arrive too early for lunch at the Flower Pot Hotel (home of some of the biggest stuffed fish in glass cases I've ever seen!), so end up eating at the Stag & Huntsman in Hambleden. This is a good pub, with a fantastic garden that is always full of walkers and cyclists in the summer, and does really nice food - the disadvantage of this pub is that, if you go by the book, the steepest climb of the day comes straight after lunch, when you are least enthusiastic about it!

Today we decided to park up in the free car park on Skirmitt Road on the way to Hambleden, walked into the village (home of "the" WH Smith), past the pub and up the dreaded hill, then through woodland and along the Chiltern Way, crossing a large tract of (very well-managed) Forestry Commission land, then down into Marlow for lunch. This left us with the "easy bit" after lunch - down to the river in Marlow and along the Thames Path, leaving the fishermen behind, looking over the Thames to Bisham Church and Abbey, down to Temple Lock and across the river, further along to Hurley Lock and the village of Hurley, back down to the river to Aston, high above the Thames, then down to Hambleden Lock and back to the car.

As well as near-constant property envy, the whole walk had a bit of a Springwatch feel to it. In addition to the first snowdrops and catkins, we saw a ridiculous amount of birdlife, from several gaggles of geese, numerous ducks, swans, grebes, red kites etc. to a covey of partridges (yes, I'll admit I had to look that one up!). From an animal point of view, it also went a bit crazy, as we saw not only the usual cows, sheep and horses, but also deer, llamas, a rabbit, donkeys, little spotty pigs running around a field like it was the most fun possible in the world, a dead rat and a non-existent bull. There is nothing more guaranteed to strike fear into the heart of a walker wearing a bright orange Gore-tex jacket than a "beware of the bull" sign (particularly when you can't see the whole field the bull is alleged to be in).

Non-existent bulls notwithstanding, I would totally recommend this walk for a combination of easy walking, a fantastic stretch of Thames Path and well-maintained woods and forests (enjoy them now before the government flogs them off and please sign the petition at the Woodland Trust website, if you haven't done already).