16 km (10 miles) 4/10
A mixture of woods and
meadows, with a couple of steep hills and several interesting sights
on the way - Hughenden Manor, West Wycombe caves (although not open
at the moment) and a mausoleum. There are tea-rooms at Hughenden
Manor and at the caves, and several good picnic spots. No overlap with the recently posted Saunderton via Bledlow walk.
Travel: 1006 from Marylebone, arriving 1045. Return trains at 1532, 1615, 1646, then a gap to 1748.
Lunch: the National Trust cafe at Hughenden Manor is open from 10 to 3.30 and is conventiently placed for lunch. There are picnic benches nearby. The Le De Spencer's Arms (tel 01494 535317), Downley Common 9km from the start of the walk, serves food from 12 to 3pm daily, but you are strongly advised to phone through beforehand to check.
Tea: round the corner from Saunderton station is the Golden Cross (tel 01494 565974), a regular post-walk refreshment stop.
Short walk option: it's possible to cut out the middle section of the walk by following the Short Walk directions from point 2 to 7A in the instructions, reducing the walk to 9.6 km/6 miles.
For walk directions, map and GPX click here.
T=2.3
1 comment:
An improvement in the weather after the last couple of days brought 19 to the start on a #bright-crisp-cold day. With such a big group, and people not wanting to hang around in the cold, the group soon got spread out. Your correspondent and a couple of others soon found themselves detached in the first wood. With a thick carpet of fallen leaves, it was difficult to tell if we were on a path or the GPX route, but anyhow all found a way through. We saw some patches of ice on the grass but in the woods it was squelchy enough to require good boots.
The next wood is also a bit tricky to navigate and I'm afraid I led our little group along the main path signposted for Hughenden Manor instead of the official route. We got there to find some picknickers ensconced on the green while others had squeezed into the crowded NT cafe. I gave up on queuing for a coffee there, wasting valuable time as the other picknickers decided it was too cold to wait and headed off before I could have my lunch. So for most of the afternoon it was just three of us stragglers. We dallied briefly at the mausoleum to muse on the vanity of Francis Dashwood, thinking that anyone would remember who he was centuries later.
We got to the station shortly before the 1532 train. On the platform we met walker #20 who had missed the morning train, done some vital shopping, arrived an hour later, taken one of the short cuts and had finished in time to meet the main group for a drink before the train.
I think most of the sprinters ahead of us went to the Golden Cross and some lingered there but I decided to catch the train along with about half the group. Off we went in time for two of us to fit in the evening walk, making the most of a fine day
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