Length: 15.7 km (9.8 miles)
Toughness: 6 out of 10 A steep ascent either side of the lunch pub, one of which can be avoided. Remainder of walk: 3 out of 10
London Marylebone: 10-13 hrs Chilterns service to Aylesbury
Arrive Princes Risborough: 10-59 hrs
Return
Great Missenden to Marylebone: 16-01, 16-31, 17-25, 18-04 and 18-31 hrs
Rail ticket as your journeys are on different branches of the Chiltern Railways network, the correct ticket today is to where the branch lines converge, viz: a day return to Aylesbury Any Route Permitted
This is one of my favourite autumn walks, and hopefully today the beech woods such as Monkton Wood will display fine autumn leaf colour.
The morning leg is a mixture of woodland and farmland, passing a windmill in Lacey Green. Lunch is best taken at Bryant's Bottom at the usually good Gate Inn. Just before the pub, you cross a road and take the steep path ahead through light woodland to Denner Farm, then a steep descent to the pub. This climb and descent can be avoided by walking along the road. If you do take the steep path and opt not to have lunch at the Gate pub you can stay on top (and avoid the post lunch climb), connecting with the main route just before Denner Hill house.
After Bryant's Bottom the walk continues up a steep grassy slope then along a private road passing some large properties and on down along field edges to Perks Lane. You climb up this road to head up a grassy slope to the Polecat Inn, your late lunch option. From this pub you head down to Peterley Wood. Take care when following the directions through this wood (on either the yellow or blue routes) as many a SWC walker has gone off piste here and become lost. Assuming you make it to the exit of this wood, you cross another large open field to enter woodland. Through this wood and down through another one takes you to the outskirts of Great Missenden. Once in the town you have a choice of pubs and cafes on the High Street for your post walk refreshments, all a short distance from the railway station.
Enjoy !
T=1.45
Walk Directions are here: L=1.45
3 comments:
Including late arrivals who joined us at the lunch pub, we mustered n=22 today, an excellent mid-week turnout for this lovely walk in the Chilterns. The weather started w=overcast-with-some-sunny-spells-breezy-and-very-mild, with the forecasted rain arriving bang on time at 16-15 hrs. Following the recent rainy days I was expecting today's walk to be our first muddy walk of the season, but conditions under foot were mostly good with little mud all day.
We enjoyed the morning leg through classic, gentle Chilterns countryside, offering some lovely views. But the leaf colour for the time of year was disappointing: some colour underfoot, but not much on the trees: not sure why.
Nine of us dined at the Gate Inn at Bryants Bottom and we were not disappointed with our lunches; nice food, arriving promptly and served with a smile. Good beer, too ! Two of our sandwichers joined us for a drink in the pub, whilst the other picnickers didn't hang around but set off on the afternoon leg of the walk, not to be seen again by the rest of us. Home for "an early bath", perhaps. The lunchers left the pub in relays, and I was a back marker with one other. We made it to Great Missenden just as the rain began to fall: perfect timing !
Some had tea in Great Miss, others headed home on early trains. I was one of three on the 16-31hrs.
A grand day out.
Re leaf colour: cold nights (or in this case, lack of them) is a key factor, in my opinion.
See
https://nature-and-weather.walkingclub.org.uk/p/october-introduction-to-leaf-fall.html
At Marcus's request, an expanded version of the above comment, which I sent to him privately:
Yes, autumn colour has gone backwards. The reason is simple. A very mild second half to October, in particular with very mild nights. My rule (which works fairly well) is that for autumn colour you have to look for cold nights (down to five or six degrees) and then count ten days after that. We had excellent conditions early in October. After a hot dry summer (which led to sugar build-up in the leaves), we then had some cold nights, and the result was super colour, with lots of anthocyanins (the chemical that produces the redder tints), and some really spectacular colours as a result. But the cold nights did not continue, and those leaves that had turned fell off, and the rest are then green, awaiting the next nudge.
The key thing here is that autumn goes in phases. All along from August to November there is the “slow shed”, which is a few leaves falling off the trees, sometimes falling green. But then you get some cold nights, and that sets more tinting off. But often only some. So yellow flecks on a tree, or patches of tint. Those leaves fall and the rest are green - until the next phase of leaf turning.
Of course eventually - typically in the second or third week of November - seasonality wins out, and all the remaining leaves turn. But if it remains very mild, you can just have a prolonged slow shed. In 2005, I think it was, 30% of leaves were green at the start of December.
Incidentally, there is also an inside/outside effect. The first cold snaps turn the leaves on the exposed outer faces of the trees - individual trees in a a hedgerow, exposed faces of woods. Only in the last phase of leaf fall does it get down to path level - ie the inner leaves in the wood, which are more sheltered from the cold in the earlier phase. So to get the best Chiltern beechwood effect - and timing this is VERY VERY difficult - you need to catch it at this path level phase. Then you walk through the wood and all is golden. But this is only towards the very end of leaf fall.
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