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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 1 January 2020

New Year's Day Walk North - Beaconsfield to Amersham

Morning: Reverse of afternoon leg of Book 1, Walk 10 - Beaconsfield Circular
Afternoon: Afternoon leg of SWC 36 - Amersham Circular via Chalfont St Giles

Length: 16 km  (10 miles)
Toughness: 4 out of 10

London Marylebone:  09-43 hrs   Stratford upon Avon service
Arrive Beaconsfield: 10-12 hrs

Return

Amersham to Marylebone: 09 and 29 past the hour
Amersham to Baker Street: LT underground service - usually 2 or 3 an hour

Rail ticket

Amersham is in LT travel zone 9. Using your travel card buy an off-peak single to Beaconsfield from the edge of your card's zone, then use your travel card for your return journey.

Leave additional time this morning if travelling by u'ground to Marylebone: there can be 15 minute gaps between trains on New Year's Day.


This New Year's Day, as a change from Henley and Cookham, I thought we would give this hybrid walk a go for our NYD Walk North or West.

Leaving Beaconsfield railway station we walk through the town and out onto its golf course, which we traverse before heading for Seer Green and then Jordans villages.  We will stop somewhere in the morning to toast in the New Year with some bubbly, as is traditional on these walks. I will bring the basic supplies: perhaps one of the gents could bring along a back-up bottle and some plastic champagne flutes, with the ladies providing some nibbles to enjoy with the shampoo.  After this interlude we walk through a Quaker burial ground then walk up a road before we head through woods to the outskirts of the village of Chalfont St Peter. From there we walk along field edges to follow the route of the dried up River Misbourne all the way to Chalfont St Giles - where lunch awaits us at the Merlins Cave. We are expected at 1 pm.

After lunch we switch walks  - from reversing Book 1, Walk 10 - Beaconsfield Circular, to SWC 36 - Amersham Circular, which we follow from Chalfont St Doo-dah to Amersham. The route takes us uphill, over some large fields, passing through Hill Farm on the way. In the setting sun we should then descend to Old Amersham, then uphill again on a woodland path to the new town and its railway station for your journey home. Tea can be taken in the old town - Seasons Cafe Deli being popular with SWC walkers, or in the new town at the Beech House bar-restaurant, located some 150 metres up Hill Avenue, the road opposite the railway station.
T=1.10
You will need two sets of Directions. The Beaconsfield Circular Directions are here L=1.10  
Using the + - toggle you may close the Main Directions (clockwise) and the Chiltern Open Air Museum option and just print off the Anti- Clockwise Directions which we will be following in the morning.
The Amersham Circular Walk Directions are here






13 comments:

Gabriella Palmano said...

I shall be bringing sausages, and if I’m feeling generous maybe some chilli chicken wings too. If anyone coming is vegan or vegetarian please let me know and I’ll gladly take along something meat free fir you to munch on.
Gabriella

Anonymous said...

Hello. Is the travel card referred to an all-zone card which you buy on the day, or some special OAP card? Not walked in area before. Merci bien.

Marcus said...

If you do not possess a travelcard one option for you is to buy a LT all-zone travelcard on the day, plus a single from the edge of the card's zone to Beaconsfield.
Not an OAP pass !

Anonymous said...

You can use an Oyster card for both legs of this walk.

Anonymous said...

Marcus is correct. Beaconsfield isn't within the London Travelcard Zone so you'll also need a single from edge of the travelcard zone to Beaconsfield.

Bill S said...

If you are planning to buy a ticket at the ticket office at Marylebone Station I'd advise that you allow plenty of time as the queue can be fairly long and slow moving at times, particularly if you get stuck behind a load of visitors heading to Bicester Shopping Village.

Bill S said...

Marcus - I'll bring along a back-up bottle, and a pack of 8 flutes. Bill S

PeteG said...

To buy online for collection, get a ticket from West Ruislip which is the zone 6 boundary station

Anonymous said...

Does our train have to stop at West R, though, which it doesn't?

Walker said...

It does not, no. This rule applies on the rest of the network when using split tickets, but not when buying tickets from London Travelcard boundaries, or equivalent stations.

Marcus said...

Thanks Bill, that will be much appreciated.
Thank you also Gabriella should you bring along some bangers - your sausages went down very well on last year's New Year Day walk when we stopped en route to Cookham - quite delicious, I recall.

Anonymous said...

Thank you Pete and Walker for card information.

Walker said...

N=14 on this walk: 11 at the start, two who caught us up, and one who materialised at lunch. One, or possibly more, left us at lunch and walked back to Beaconsfield, where one had parked a car. The weather was w=grey. Some would like me to add “and mild”, but actually it was pretty chilly in the early morning and I had several layers on all day.

We stopped for our New Year drinks on the green at Seer Green, where we commandeered the seesaw in the playground to use as a table, an action which earned a fierce glowering rebuke from a kiddie who passed with his father. After the champers, three went on the swings, watched by other parents. The front page of next week’s Seer Green Mercury will doubtless bear the headline “DRUNKEN RAMBLERS IN PLAYGROUND RAMPAGE”

Thanks to all those who brought food and drink: two bottles of fizz, one of rose and elderflower cordial, a whole box of sausages, “salmon in blankets”, a delicious Hungarian fried cheesy thing, cheese squares, crisps. Really next year we could probably turn this into a picnic lunch.

In the Quaker burial ground at Jordans there were two snowdrops. Reaching Merlin’s Cave in Chalfont St Giles we admired the architecture and were cheered by the relative lack of diners (well, I was), which seemed to promise quick service. But sadly the place seemed to be suffering from Day after the Night Before-itis. It took a while to get the one waiter to take our order, and the two staff in the kitchen took an hour and a quarter to produce most of the food. Quite a few ordered soup and were told this had to come at the same time as the main meal because that made things easier for the kitchen etc etc, except two of us pleaded and got ours quickly. The other soups then came ahead of the main meals anyway, and when the main meals came the waiter did not know what they were. “Isn’t that the Thai curry?” “I don’t know: it is my first day here.” It would be nice to report that the food was worth the wait, but generally it was not - the soup excepted, apparently.

We did manage to leave lunch by 3pm, however, and we then walked over the hills across a series of large, but not massively muddy, arable fields (following the route of the proposed HS2 tunnel almost exactly) to get to Old Amersham by dusk. Sadly no tea was to be had here, and New Amersham by the station did not exactly look like party town either. So we went straight to the station, where a fast Marylebone train was pulling into the platform. Two of us had a late tea (including a rather frozen vegan cheesecake) at Patisserie Valerie on Marylebone station (which might do more business if it turned the heating on).