Length: 15.8km (9.8 miles) - shortcuts available: see below
Catch the 9.49 Amersham-bound Metropolitan Line train from Baker Street (9.43 Kings Cross) to arrive at Chorleywood at 10.32.
Later start: You could plausibly leave 40 minutes later (eg 10.28 Kings Cross, 10.34 Baker Street) and do the Shorter Start: see below.
Tickets: Oyster, Contactless etc
Another Saturday, another rail strike. (Sigh...) But this Chilterns outing, reached entirely by Underground, is not at all second best, being a fine walk up the beautiful Chess Valley, with plentiful views, and passing through the interesting historic village of Chenies.
The usual lunch pub is the Red Lion in Chenies, a fairly small place which usually manages to accommodate us. If not, while I have reports that the Bedford Arms down the road is basically a restaurant these days, it describes itself on its website as a "country pub and hotel" and has a large garden with plenty of tables if the weather is fine.
There is in fact a third lunch option, the Cock Inn (only on the main walk: not on the shorter options), which is a perfectly pleasant place with a spacious, if slightly bland, garden: but it is only 2 miles into the walk, unfortunately.
If you don't want to get up so early, the Shorter Start from Chorleywood (option B in the walk directions) saves two miles off the walk and is a perfectly pleasant walk through a beech wood and up a quiet bridleway to Chenies village. If you leave 45-50 minutes later, you should hook up with the main group at one of the Chenies pubs.
If you are too full after lunch, or the weather turns bad, there is a shorter ending to Chalfont & Latimer station - again, mainly wooded.
Otherwise, after more nice downland scenery, the walk deposits you in Chesham. Reports of the demise of the quirky Drawing Room cafe are much exaggerated (ie wrong), but it does music events on Saturday nights and shuts its tea room early to prepare for them. That leaves tea addicts to the tender mercies of the chain outlets. My spies (ie Google) says Caffe Nero now shuts at 4pm, but Costa Coffee is open until 6pm. The town also has various pubs.
Metropolitan Line trains back from Chesham are at 00 and 30 past the hour.
2 comments:
N=15 on this walk, including one late starter who caught us up at lunch. A w=mainly-sunny day (a bit cloudy for a while in the afternoon, but it cleared again) on which it was a joy to be out walking. As always, the surprise with this walk was how rural it felt despite suburbia lurking just out of sight over the hills.
At least two other walking groups - the Hampstead Ramblers (?), a MeetUp group - were out doing the same or similar routes, but we easily disentangled ourself from them. The MeetUps came to eat at the same pub as us, the Red Lion in Chenies, but we had got there first and were well into our meals by the time they arrived. Nine of us ate there, split between Insiders and Outsiders. Nice food, efficient service.
In the afternoon it became apparent we were in danger of finishing rather too early. So at the top of one of the hill climbs a few of us did a very radical thing and laid down on the grass to have a snooze and contemplate the wispy high clouds. This also allowed three stragglers to catch up. Shocking behaviour I know. It won’t happen again.
Approaching Chesham there was some fragmentation. Which is to say, some people who I though were right behind me suddenly were not. Did they miss a turning? A few of us did manage to hook up and have tea at Costa (faute de mieux). Since the 16.30 train from Chesham was cancelled, we also met up with another walker on the 17.00. Whether because of the cancellation or the rail strike, the platform at Chesham was ten times busier than I have ever seen it. But the train was not too bad as we clattered back to reality in the late afternoon sunshine.
The 3 behind did (briefly)take at least 2 wrong turns. Soon corrected, so not ‘L-word’ wrong. And, as ever, not Mr Tigers fault. He was merely following the others, having lost his place in the directions. They were soon back on track and caught what must have been the 1600, two needing to connect with trains and one eager to avoid yet another down and up, even if it was just to the High Street.
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