Route: Wendover Circular via Cross Coppice, Pulpit Hill Fort and Ellesborough Church
Distance: 8.3 miles
The hottest day of the year meant that this wasn't the quickest or most comfortable of walks but the views over the Buckinghamshire countryside were as good as they get and the early part of the walk included some welcome shade in the woods.
The walk is the first one in the Time Out Book Of Country Walks volume 2, following a different route to the Rough Guide's Wendover walk (described as Walk 5 elsewhere in the blog) until the very end. This one does not get as close to Chequers or follow the Ridgeway but it does cross Beacon Hill and goes through the churchyard of Ellesborough Church and offers just as good a combination of woodland paths and stunning hilltop views.
Because we did the short version of the walk, we missed out the lunchtime pub - there is a Budgens in Wendover that was a good source of picnic lunch and a fallen tree in the shade near the ruins of Pulpit Hill Fort made a perfect lunch stop (anyone hankering after full sunshine should carry on until after the path crosses the Ridgeway, as there are some good view-laden hillsides). If we'd have been a bit later we'd also have been able to have tea at the church, which offers teas from 2-5, as well as tower tours.
If it hadn't have been so hot, this would have been a fantastic walk; as it was, we were a bit too hot and bothered to really enjoy it all (especially the long-ish stretch through fields at the end - apparently Ellesborough gets its name from the fact that asses used to graze there, but now it's all sheep). This is supposed to be a good walk to do in the autumn, so we may well try it again then. We have also done the longer 11 mile version previously, which includes Whiteleaf Cross - another steep bit of climbing but with far-reaching views again.
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