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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.

Saturday 12 May 2018

Saturday walk - Haddenham to Aylesbury - buttercup meadows and a grand stately home

Length: 17.4km (10.8 miles) to 25.3km (15.8 miles)
Toughness: 6 out of 10

10.06 train from Marylebone to Haddenham and Thame Parkway, arriving 10.40

The above train stops (after Haddenham) at the Bicester Village shopping outlet, so you will be sharing it with numerous would-be shoppers. A quieter alternative might be the 9.43 stopping service which gets to Haddenham & Thame Parkway at 10.34: if you get this, please wait for the later train so everyone can start the walk together...

Best ticket: the walk author advises an Aylesbury "any permitted" return: this only covers you as far as Princes Risborough on the outward journey, so you may have to pay a single on board from there to Haddenham. (This advice is, as the lawyers say, "without prejudice"... See also ** below if planning to finish in Stone.)

For walk directions click here. For GPX click here.

I have a happy memory of doing this walk at this time of year two or three years back, when the meadows in its early stages were awash with buttercups and the paths all lined with white drifts of cow parsley.

Otherwise its star attraction is the very grand Waddesdon Manor, built by the Rothschilds to show off their wealth. All routes get a grand distant view of the house. To see it close-up you have to do the main 8.4 mile morning route: otherwise a shortcut reduces the morning to 6.9 miles. There are various lunch options in the village of Waddesdon.

If you want to make a proper visit to the house (free to National Trust members), there are buses (route number 16) from Waddesdon village to Aylesbury at 15.25, 17.25 and 19.20.

Otherwise after lunch you have a choice of:

- the main walk route into Aylesbury (15.8 miles from Haddenham or 14.1 miles if you did the morning short cut)

- a shortcut to Aylesbury Vale Parkway station (12.4 miles from Haddenham or 10.8 miles if you did the morning short cut): but note that there is no tea option on this ending and trains are only hourly at 13 past the hour.

- or an ending at the village of Stone (14.2 miles from Haddenham or 12.6 miles if you did the morning short cut), which has a pub, and buses (number 280) at 28, 39 and 59 past until 19.28 and then roughly half hourly into the evening. ** Incidentally the buses go in the other (Oxford-bound) direction at 10 and 35 past (at least until 18.35: after this, check) to Haddenham and Thame Parkway station, the 10 past connecting to the fast (Bicester Village) train at 38 past with a 15 minute wait, the 35 past having a 30 minute wait for the slower stopping train at 13 past. If you do this, it resolves all train ticket ambiguity as you could simply get a day return to Haddenham and Thame Parkway

Trains back from Aylesbury's main station go at 18, 29 and 48 past the hour and take about an hour. T=3.192


1 comment:

JohnE said...

n=3 emerged from the 10:06 from Marylebone, the 09:43 more leisurely train having been cancelled. W=Morning,_bright,_afternoon,_steady_rain_from_3pm. We took the morning shortcut to compensate for an earlier navigational error so had only distant views of the impressive Waddesdon Manor. Lunch in the Long Dog was good but maybe a little pricy. After lunch we took the main route option to Aylesbury and encountered several navigational problems, we suspect largely due to changes on the ground since the last review of the walk directions. In one place the supposed gate had been replaced by fence, a problem we overcame with a bit of climbing. Arriving in Aylesbury soon after 5pm, we went straight for the train. Overall, morning very good, afternoon, less so.