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This Week's Walks - Archive

Please see the Saturday Walker's Club This Week's Walks page.

This is an archive of walks done by the Saturday Walker's Club. You should only need to use this page if the SWC website is down.

Sunday 3 April 2016

Sunday Walk 1 – Gently rolling Buckinghamshire hills

Book 1 Walk 10 – Beaconsfield Circular
Length: 19.5 km (12.1 miles). Toughness: 4/10

10:15 Bicester North train from Marylebone, arriving Beaconsfield at 10:42.

There are three return trains per hour, at slightly irregular times: typically 03, 36 & 42 minutes past.

It seems odd that this Book 1 walk hasn't had a Sunday posting for over five years, since it benefits from a decent Sunday train service and a very short journey. It's in a landscape of gently rolling Buckinghamshire hills on the southern fringes of the Chilterns, with several interesting features en route: Milton's Cottage, the Quaker Meeting House at Jordans, etc.

There are mixed reports on the walk's Feedback page about the lunch pubs in Chalfont St Giles, but the original suggestion (Merlin's Cave) has been refurbished as a Charles Wells pub and looks well worth a try; you should get there around 12.45pm. A nearby alternative requiring a short detour up Silver Hill is the Fox & Hounds, or you could stop earlier at a pub mentioned en passant in para 27, the White Hart. You might be able to get tea halfway through the afternoon at Jordans, while Jungs gets a favourable mention at the end of the walk, a short distance up the main road past Beaconsfield station.

You'll need to bring Book 1 or print the directions from the TOCW1 Walk 10 page.
T=1.10

3 comments:

NATASHA said...

I have not walked on a Sunday before and am wondering if these walked are well attended. I am interested in joining but would not like to do it on my own. Any comments will be gratefully received.

Walker said...

5-15 walkers is a typical average, but it does vary. Saturday walks tend to get higher attendance than Sunday ones, south of the Thames ones more than north of the Thames, and weather makes a difference (particularly on Sunday, a little less so on Saturday which is our "traditional" walking day). But it absolutely varies. Some walks get 30, some get 2 or 1 or even 0 (very rare, but possible). Sometimes the weather is awful and you get a big group.

You can see some recent numbers on how many attended each walk here

http://www.walkingclub.org.uk/swc/recent_walks.shtml

You have to click on each walk to get the walk post and then scroll down to see the comment, which will usually have a walk report including how many attended. If there is no report, then probably no one turned up.

PeteB said...

n=11 on the walk with the weather w=fine-and-sunny-to-start-but-clouding-over-later. Its been years since I last did this walk and although pleasant enough I could not quite work out why it was scheduled as the 10th walk in the original TO timetable as it is far too early for the abundant bluebells in the woods where the trails are inevitably muddy in early March. I much preferred the walk when we hit more open countryside.

The good news is that the Merlins Cave pub has been completely refurbished and modernised and is now an excellent lunch spot with an attractive outside seating area. Our resident "Sunday roasts" inspector (D Colver esq) gave it a very good rating with one point deducted for the lack of crispness to the roast potatoes. The young and enthusiastic staff served all meals promptly. The excellent village deli is also still open but now has competition from a large "Costas" which has taken over a nearby pub and frankly looks a bit out of place on the corner of the attractive village green.

The group kept together the whole day and 4 of us had refreshments at a Costas near the station -their regular tea is not bad but the Earl Grey disappointed!

Finally well done to whoever drew the gpx route for this complex walk. There were a couple of places in the woods where trails veered this way and that and it differed slightly from the instructions but not seriously so.