Ridgeway - Coombe Hill to Lewknor (14th April 2006)

Next section we set off from the National Trust car park near to Coombe Hill

A nice lady taking part in a National Trust was going round offering hot cross buns to people, including us, even though we weren't part of their walk. Even knowing we weren't, she was still Ok with me having one - yumm

This time the weather was a lot nicer than the last time we were there, some drizzle, but at least the high winds had gone.

Set off through the woods, down the hill and then marched across Tony's front lawn, as in across the field that forms part of Chequers, the camera were all very evident :-)

Again we find parts of the Ridgeway are co-located with the Icknield Way

There is an unusual chalk marking on the side of Whiteleaf Hill, some sort of cross on top of a triangle - seems its "Whiteleaf Hill with its ancient chalk cross" - you can see it clearly at maps.google.co.uk, don't have a grid reference, but find Whiteleaf near Princes Risborough, and track along Peters Lane eastwards into the Chilterns - it was cleaned up / repaired in 2002/03 by Bucks CC, there are some nice pictures at http://www.petergoodearl.co.uk/laceygreen/prisboro/whiteleaf/index.htm

We head down from the ridgeline, into the field of what I think we can call the Vale of Aylesbury.
Cross over the railway at Saunderton tunnel, it's not exactly long, and walk through the middle of the golf course. There's then a few up and downs as the ridgeway works it's way past Bledlow.
The section near Chinor goes along a sort of "man made ridgeway", actually it's the section of land left between two big quarry pits

Finally under the M4 motorway (what a noise), past a farm where the family were doing some clay pidgeon shooting and back to the Zafira for a most welcome cup of tea.

The worse memory of this section was the grey mud, a lot of the sections, especially near towns were really chewed up and the slip / sliding along was really taxing, the section in the woods where I presume the Forestry Commission had made up the path with some scalping were actually a relief.

In someways the best was not on the walk per se. When we got back to the Coombe Hill car park, we decided to do the short walk through the woods to the monument on the top of the hill. I'm really glad we made the effort as the evening was glorious, especially in comparison to the previous time we'd been there when the wind was a howling rain laden gale! The sun was on it was down, the panoramic view from the top was just lovely

And the momument is to the men of Buckinghamshire lost in the Boer War