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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 21 December 2019

Saturday walk - Chorleywood to Chesham

Length: 16km (9.9 miles) - shorter options possible: see below
Toughness: 5 out of 10

9.57 Metropolitan Line train from Kings Cross (10.05 Baker Street) to Chorleywood, arriving 10.46

Tickets: Use Oyster or contactless: DON'T FORGET to tap out at Chorleywood: it has no barriers and the tap out machine is AFTER the subway from the arrival platform

For walk directions click here. For GPX click here. For a map of the route click here.

I thought this simple Chilterns valley and ridge walk might appeal to those who have Christmas stuff to attend to and don't want to back to town too late. It dips in and out of the Chess Valley, and though it has some mud, as all December walks do, this is Chilterns chalk and so reasonably well-drained for the most part.

A late start option is to do option b) the shorter start from Chorleywood, cutting the morning to 3.1km (1.9 miles) and making the whole walk 12.6km (7.8 miles)

For lunch, the Red Lion in Chenies, 6.5km (4 miles) into the walk, is under new management - a bit more gastro than before, but still nice, with the nearby Bedford Arms as an alternative. Vegans might be interested to learn that the earlier Cock Inn - on the main walk only, not the shorter start - has a complete vegan menu (five starters, five main course, four puddings), though it is unfortunately only 3.6km (2.2 miles) into the walk: it serves food from midday,

If you are really pushed for time, there is a shorter ending to Chalfont & Latimer (option c) which ends the walk 3.4km (2.5 miles) after Chenies, making a total walk of 9.9km (6.1 miles).

Otherwise, it is 9.5km (5.9 miles) from Chenies to Chesham, where the Drawingroom is a popular and quirky tea stop.

Trains back from Chesham are at 23 and 53 past (the most infrequent service on the Underground!) T=3.81

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

Hi. Will there be a Boxing Day walk? Thank you.

Walker said...

Yes

Walker said...

I could see only two of us on the specified train, but at Chorleywood nine materialised, and one turned out to have gone on ahead, so n=10 in all. The weather forecast turned out to be spot on. I read they had a tornado in Chertsey, but we had w=sun-till-lunch-then-cloud-and-later-rain, the rain not really persistent till near the end of the walk.

In the morning there were particularly fine views near Sarratts and for a while the sun felt quite warm. Two places in the valley that might have been flooded were not, and in general the ground on this walk was reasonably firm underfoot, though of course muddy at times.

Four lunched at the Red Lion (three having the roast turkey, one saving himself for the big day...) and one more watched us eat. The sandwich eaters went to a Baptist church, apparently, and used the loos. In the afternoon we saw lots of rather disconsolate horses.

At least five of us had tea at the Drawingroom in Chesham, whose proprietors must have been disappointed that we eschewed their chai lattes, Assam and peppermint teas, and hot chocolates with orange liqueur in to have good old English Breakfast. We then got on the Mighty Met and talked of signalling systems and other topics of urgent national import as the train slowly filled with shoppers, partygoers and sulky youth on the long run to Baker Street.