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!).
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