Last weekend I went to Buckinghamshire for the weekend, to meet up with my cousin Charlotte and enjoy a walk together in the Chiltern Hills.
We picked a walk in the Chilterns as it was roughly half way between Cirencester and London (about 90 minutes journey for us both on a good day).
Our meeting point, and the start of our walk, was Saunderton – which had free parking at the railway station, just over the road from the start of the footpath which would be where our walk started. We chose a circular route which mostly avoided roads.
From Saunderton the route took us to nearby Bradenham, and enjoyed some refreshments at the village church on the green. The next bit of our walk was through the woods to Hughenden House – former home of Benjamin Disraeli and also used for making maps during World War 2 for Bomber Command. We stopped for lunch and also enjoyed an interesting talk about how the house was used during the war.
We continued our walk for another few hours, through fields, through the woods, along country lanes – the weather was great – the sun was shining but it wasn’t too hot.
I’m not sure how long our walk took in total but we got back to our cars some time around 5pm. We had booked a self catering apartment for the night, which gave us an opportunity to rest after our walk. We then went out to dinner at the Frog at Skirmett, about a 15 minute drive away. We had a lovely 2 course meal (main & pudding).
On Sunday we drove in to West Wycombe to have a late breakfast at the Walled Garden. Before too long it was time for us to go our separate ways – before leaving Buckinghamshire I went just up the road to visit the Horse Trust, only a mile or so from where we had stayed. It is home to retired police horses. There’s also a retired therapy pony there called Fred!
The date is set for our next get together, in December.
FH.
