Walks and Pints

Here's a few ideas for walks you can do in the Chilterns and the best places to seek refreshment afterwards!

Cobblers Hill and Little Hampden Walk 


If you’re coming by car from Amersham, turn left off the A413 a couple of miles out of Great Missenden into Cobblershill Road. Drive up the hill past the car park on the left (signed Cobblers Wood) and head up to a Cobblers Hill Farm. You’ll know when you get there as there’s an attractive house – now divided in to two nice cottages - opposite the farm. 


We parked up against the hedge pointing towards the farm buildings and walked the way the car was pointing, past the farm buildings and bearing left where the track divides. We then walked down a lane, with fields on the left and a wood on the right.  After about 10 minutes you come to an impressive house set back from the lane on the left. By then we’d seen at least 10 pheasants in the fields.


Walk past the house down to the end of the lane. I think this is called King’s Beech, which seems a bit odd as the only two significant trees are at the end of the lane and are of the ubiquitous Chiltern beech variety.


At this busy-ish minor road turn right and walk for about 100 metres until you reach Hotley Bottom Lane on the left. Walk up the lane past some attractive flint fronted cottages and then turn right in to Greenlands Lane (the sign was in the hedge when we walked it). Climb steadily up the steep lane passing some houses, and finally arriving at an attractive property with a wooden cabin in its garden. At this point take the footpath on the right that takes you through a gate across the lawn past the cabin, which looks like something from Huckleberry Finn with a selection of boots drying in the sun outside. Head towards the next gate which, in October, takes you into some beautifully coloured woodland.


Bear left at the fork in the path until you reach a stile which leads to another road. Walk down the hill passing Prestwood Sports Centre on the left and a thatched cottage on the right. Again this is quite a busy road but there is a pathway. Look out for a road-narrows sign. At this point take the path on the left that takes you across 3 open fields for about 3/4 mile. To the left of the first field is a farm and once you reach field 2 you start to get far reaching views across the Chilterns. This is obviously a popular walk for dog lovers judging by the amount of care required underfoot! At the end of the final field cross a stile down a path with woods on the right and fields on the right.


At the gate there is another minor but quite busy road – with plenty of cyclists panting heavily as they ascend the hill or travelling at a ferocious pace down the hill. Continue down the hill until you pass a road that intersects on the right. If you then look to your left you can look down an impressive natural boulevard of assorted trees which leads your eye down to the impressive Hampden House. 


Pass the house and come down to the road junction. This is quite a busy road which runs from Great Missenden to Aylesbury but you only need to walk on it for a few metres. Turn left at the road junction and around 10-20 metres to the left on the opposite side of the road there is a slightly overgrown path through fir trees which eventually leads to a field full of pheasants with a hedge on the left. Follow the hedge climbing quite steeply uphill until the path cuts through the hedge. Look out for this as it’s not that easy to find but there is a white arrow painted on the telegraph pole on the other side of the hedge. Keep following the path upwards looking out for a tiny church on the right. 


Arrive in Little Hampden and again get ready for disappointment if you want a pint at the Rising Sun, as it closed many years ago. Turn right, down the hill and take a path on the left just after Manor Farm. Walk down and then up the hill towards the wood. Look back at the top of the hill for possibly one of your last views of this lovely part of the Chilterns before HS2 gets its rotten teeth into the area. 


Follow the path through the wood bearing left then right. It starts to get very steep – an aerobic finale to the walk. Go through the wood to open fields between wire fences. Head for the gate at the end of the path and you should be back to pretty much where you started.


Cobblershill Walk from Liz Roberts' excellent book of Chiltern Walks

Cholesbury and Hawridge – a quick three and a half mile walk


It was a surprisingly lovely Saturday and I had an hour and a half gap in my busy schedule before heading for the Watford match.  I drove up to the Rose and Crown in Hawridge and parked my car in the layby opposite. I thought about going for a quick pre-walk pint and my mind was taken back to my sister’s wedding when I ended up going home with one of her mates and then meeting the same girl the following week in this very same pub. I smiled, sighed, shook my head and decided to forgo the drink and start walking.


Ok, back to 2013. With your back to the pub turn left and walk a couple of hundred metres down the road and then turn left on to a footpath heading down a hill. The path is almost opposite the lane to Hawridge Church.


Follow the path down to a road and a cluster of houses. Take the track on the left here pass a converted barn on your right and continue down this level track. Keep following this bridleway until you reach a quiet lane. Turn left for 10-15 metres then cross the road and continue on a footpath through the valley. It’s now a case of keeping going for about a mile until you take a path that curves up the hill and ends up close to the cricket pitch. You should be able to see the Full Moon pub (which is very nice) across the road and to your left. Head towards the pub and if, you have any sense, stop for refreshments.


Standing with your back to the pub turn left and walk for a few metres before turning left again down Rays Hill. Behind the pretty cottages on the left you can see Cholesbury Windmill which ended its working life in 1915 and is now a private residence. Keep walking down this steep hill and when you reach the sharp bend left take track signposted as a footpath and continue walking past some derelict looking kennels and then into a wood. Keep following this path and ignore any other stiles. You pass through a field with a huge expanse of Christmas Trees being commercially grown on your right. Continue through fields and pass a beech wood on your right. When you come to the next stile turn left up a quite steep hill and head for the stile at the top. You emerge in a small field and you then head towards the left corner of the field which takes you to Hawridge Court and the Church. Walk past the Church (on your right), pass the attractive houses and you come back out on Bellingdon Road. Turn left and walk back to the car. A nice 60 minutes of exercise.

A disappointing walk and a pub that was closed 


Decided to go for an easy looking walk of around 3.5 miles around Lacey Green, Parslow’s Hillock and Loosley and started at around 11.30. I’d been to the pub, the Pink and Lily, many years ago when my now adult and almost adult kids were very small. I’d also eaten at a pub in Lacey Green about 5 years ago on a slightly scary date. It may have been the Pink and Lily but in any case the food had been much better than the company of a slightly mad woman from Prestwood. 


We parked in Kiln Lane opposite the Black lion and walked down Kiln Lane until the road started to become a single track. The guidebook said you can either walk straight down the lane or turn right and then take a steep descent down the hill to a gate at the bottom of the field. Always the adventurer I directed us down the hill. As my long suffering walking companion reminded me as we approached the padlocked gate, most of my walking books were published in the last century and the authors, although undoubtedly sprightly young things when they wrote the words and proudly sketched their maps, are probably long retired or even dead now (a cheery thought for an Autumn morning). 


Consequently it came as no surprise when we had to rather stiffly (on account of my general lack of flexibility) clamber over the 5 bar gate. We then saw the path we should have been on and re-joined the walk. The lane we walked up had raised banks of trees on each side. It was quite steep, and as it is a bridleway, was covered in very thick mud. It also had very limited views on either side. Hence, it was little consolation to read that this is an ancient earthwork, dating from Saxon times.  Three quarters of a mile later we passed a nice house on the left and reached the end of the quagmire. At first we had tried to circumnavigate the mud or jump to drier parts of the path, but by the end me were rather disconsolately trudging straight through the centre, boots and trousers well splattered. Never mind. We were now at Lily Bank Farm, so time to reward ourselves by turning right and taking the half mile diversion along Lily Bottom Lane to the pub. Lily Bottom Lane is quite pleasant with a few houses on the left and woods on the right. Being October the colours in the woods are pretty striking but it still seems like we’re a week or so away from the best colours in the Chilterns


We arrived at the road junction and saw the picture of the war poet Rupert Brook that adorns the sign of the Pink & Lily. It looked quiet. Too quiet. With good reason, as it is shut and now for sale.


With heavy brow and unsatisfied ale buds we walked back the way we came. The lane now looked less attractive and the smell of the pig farm filled our senses. We met some walkers coming the other way. “The pub’s shut”, I advised, but these were obviously local people and replied levelly, “Yes, we know. We’re going to the other one”. I had no idea where ‘the other one’ was it didn’t seem likely that they were about to divulge this information so, sure in the knowledge that they was a very ‘open’ looking pub back where we’d began the walk, we started the walk back to Lily Bank Farm (where we’d originally emerged from the woods) and continued down what became an increasingly muddy track until we reached the second footpath on our right which is opposite a bridleway. From here you descend through a pretty clump of woodland and eventually arrive back at the bottom of narrow Kiln lane. Outside one of the cottages here we witnessed one child being collected by what was surely the ex-wife and then 5 minutes later we pinned ourselves to the hedge while the what we assumed was the new woman brought the new bairns back home. Modern life. And to think when me and the first Mrs P got divorced in 1998 my so was the only child in the class from a ‘broken home’. 


Eventually we arrived back at the car, changed our boots and crossed the road to the Black Horse. The pub is larger than it looks and was gloriously warm on what was a pretty chilly autumn afternoon. 4 real ales were available and the pint I had was very nice.


The bar area is quite small but welcoming and beyond the bar is a restaurant area with 6-8 tables. We sat at the back of the pub at a wooden table opposite the Gents and under the dartboard, which looks like it’s regularly used, but happily wasn’t being so on the day we sat there!


We didn’t eat there, but the roasts looked generous and the menu is a good example of the type of pub I think will do well in the current economic climate, i.e. it offers filling comfort food with main dishes priced at £7 to £10.