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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.

Wednesday 3 April 2019

Wednesday Walk Saunderton via Bledlow Circular - Bledlow Ridge and Rolling Chiltern Hills

Book 2, Walk 2 - Saunderton via Bledlow Circular

Length: 17.3 km (10.7 miles )       But seems a bit longer due to long afternoon
Toughness: 6 out of 10                  Two steep(ish) hills and several hillocks

London Marylebone:  10-13 hrs    Aylesbury service
Arrives Saunderton:   10-53 hrs

Return  Saunderton: 15-53, 16-51, 17-25, 18-26 and 19-27 hrs


No navigation tests proposed for us today - we just follow the Book 2 Directions for this enjoyable,  energetic outing in the Chilterns. The morning is mostly flat or undulating, but not steep. The inclines all come in the afternoon.
Lunch today is at the Lions pub, Bledlow - which I have usually found to be walker friendly and good. After lunch you have a mixture of woods, fields and open farmland, with two steep inclines and several hillocks - all to keep the SWC walker honest. You come to an attractive church, St Mary the Virgin, in Radnage (worth a visit if open) before you have your final steep climb up onto Bledlow Ridge. After a woodland ridge walk it's down over a vast field, then along field boundaries and over fields before your final descent back into Saunderton. Your tea stop is at the pub down the road from the railway station -  the Golden Cross.
T=2.2
Walk Directions here L=2.2

2 comments:

David said...

Six SWC walkers were on the 10.13 from Marylebone and one caught up with us at the lunchtime pub, so n=7 in all. There was also a sizeable group of female French walkers, well-equipped with poles, but seemingly not too sure of where they were going. We all got off at Saunderton, but the two groups set off in opposite directions, the SWC walkers (unlike our politicians grappling with Brexit) completely sure of the way forward. Excellent conditions underfoot, with only one slightly muddy stretch all day. Three sandwich eaters sat outside Lions at the picnic tables provided and the other four (one of whom paid a quick preprandial visit to Lyde Garden) opted for a pub lunch. Two picnickers pressed on after a fairly brief stop, keen to get climbing Chinnor Hill and, for one of the two, there was the added incentive of a free ticket to The Book of Mormon. The directions were easy to follow and the two walkers got back to Saunderton in plenty of time to catch the 3.53 train to London. Walks in the Chilterns are always a joy, and today's weather was ideal: w=a_cool_gentle_breeze_with_increasingly_warm_sunshine.

Marcus said...

To expand on David's comprehensive report, a number of our fair weather walkers stayed away today, no doubt put off by the dire weather forecast which threatened rain, thunder storms, pestilence, plague, locusts, Black Death, Brexit and worse. As it transpired we enjoyed a glorious Spring Day with no rain and intermittent sunny spells - delightful walking weather. The five of us who set off some time after the two sandwichers stopped for a relaxing tea at walk-end in the pleasant garden of the Golden Cross pub before catching the 17-25 hrs train, leaving Saunderton in late afternoon sunshine. On arriving in Marylebone some 45 mins later it had just started to snow ! There you go........