In the valley of Chitty Chitty Bang Bang and The Vicar of Dibley

Date: Saturday 14th January
Route: Ibstone Common to Turville, Fingest and back
Distance: 8 miles, theoretically (possibly 9.5 in practice!)

With clear blue skies, loads of sunshine and the West Highland Way to get ready for, there was absolutely no excuse to not go walking this weekend.

The first walk of the weekend came from the Pathfinder Guide to the Chilterns and Thames Valley, a very welcome Christmas present (thanks, Pam!). Whilst we have walked around Turville before (there is a nice 3-mile walk in the AA 1001 Walks collection), we hadn't had the opportunity to do such a long walk here before and - even though we went a bit astray near the end - I'm sure that this is a walk that we will repeat time and again, as it is both exceptionally beautiful and very peaceful. A crisp frost meant the ground was hard in places (but better than the muddy alternative).

The walk starts in the village of Ibstone, which is not far from junction 5 of the M40 (not that you would know, as it is far enough away for there not to be any noise). After walking around Ibstone Common, there is a bit of descent then a climb into Idlecombe Wood, on a path among the beech trees at the hilltop with fantastic views along a lovely valley. Plenty of "wow" moments in every direction.

The route continues downhill into the village of Turville, better known as Dibley on TV, or the home of Caractacus Potts in "Chitty Chitty Bang Bang" (the windmill on the hillside is a key landmark of the walk, even though the steep climb up there is not part of this particular walk). There is a pub in the village where you can stop, or you can continue on a low-level path that starts near the path to the windmill and leads all the way to the next village of Fingest, again home to a pub, with what looks like a great beer garden (in summer).

From the pub the path leads back into more woodland and runs pretty straight for a few miles on a very easy path before heading up to the left. This is where we really missed the Time Out Guide, which makes it virtually impossible to get lost and unfortunately overshot the turning (we're blaming a phantom missing gate!) - thankfully a helpful fellow walker put us back on track and we had the dubious pleasure of a heart-pounding climb to finish off the walk through woods before returning to Ibstone.

So even though this didn't go 100% according to plan - and we regretted leaving the Ordnance Survey map at home -  this is actually a fantastic walk, that passes through some beautiful countryside and I'm confident we'll walk it again, especially now we know where not to go wrong!