COVID 19
Track-and-Trace: please provide email address (preferred) or mobile phone number at the start
Rule of Thirty: for the foreseeableLength:
24.8 km (15.5 mi)
Ascent/Descent:
238/244 m
Net
Walking Time: ca. 5 ½ hours
Toughness:
4 out of 10
Take
the 10.01 Crewe train from Euston (calls Harrow &
Wealdstone and Watford Junction), arriving Cheddington at 10.41.
Return
trains:
xx.21, xx.44 and xx.53 (41-62 minutes journey time).
Buy
a Leighton Buzzard return.
A
splendid walk through East Buckinghamshire’s rolling landscape of fields and
wooded areas on the edge of the Chiltern Hills, linking up a handful of
delightful hill top villages to provide panoramic views across pleasant
countryside. Broadly following the Thames/Great Ouse watershed in the morning,
it initially heads west, mostly with grand views of the Chilterns (when not
walking in wooded areas), to then turn north with far views into Aylesbury Vale
to the west, on to lunch pubs at either Aston Abbotts or Cublington. The
afternoon route is more level, but still features the hilltop village of Wing
and ends with a fairly tranquil descent into Linslade (for Leighton Buzzard
station).
Disclaimer: This walk involves a level crossing of the Leighton Buzzard-bypass dual carriageway.
Lunch: The Unicorn in Cublington
(13.9 km/8.7 mi, food to 16.00), or (a little earlier and 250m off-route) the Royal
Oak Inn in Aston Abbotts (11.5 km/7.1 mi).
Tea: several pubs listed
in the directions, they are all in the Linslade part of town, i.e.: close to
the station. There is also The Black
Lion in Leighton Buzzard’s centre (at 20 High Street), a bit further
away, which has been voted ‘CAMRA Pub of the Year Bedfordshire’ in its
first year. Or The Bald Buzzard,
a micropub at 6 Hockcliffe Street.
For
walk directions, map, height profile, comments, and
gpx/kml files click here.
T=swc.195
1 comment:
n=5 in w=very-warm-mostly-without-a-breeze weather. The 8-car train was pretty full, although not quite rammed (an event at Silverstone may have had to do with that, walk poster!), and at Cheddington we found the start of the walk off the Station Approach blocked by a high Network Rail metal fence. Seeeing that this was deemed to be a text-review outing anyway, the work for the walk author started there and then, by finding an alt. route.
Some grassy margins and narrow paths were quite overgrown, mostly with nettles, so much so that we filled a fair amount of time talking about nettle soup, nettle pesto and all kinds of other things one can do with the little annoyances. Else there were fantastic far views, about a handful of drink-and-rest stops under shady trees and - annoyingly - several closed pubs. The targeted lunch pub The Unicorn had perplexed us already by not answering the phone despite the website giving the impression of a thriving business, and once we got there, we were greeted by a chalkboard informing the world of a "closure up to Wednesday". Pingdemic? Combined with there being no water tap in the churchyard opposite, that put pressure on one of us who had packed very lightly, to say the least (i.e.: nothing at all but a teenie weenie water bottle). But the nearby village cricket club kindly allowed refilling of said bottle.
In Wing, The Queen's Head was also closed, despite a large chalkboard proclaiming opening hours of 12.00-18.00 on Sundays. Thankfully, at least the Cock Inn down the same road was open, so we had lunch there, at 15.45 hours. The lightly packed walker then bused it to LB to get back to London for an evening date, and the rest of us just about reached the much-delayed 17.53 (just as well, as the following train was cancelled due to staff shortages).
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