ROUTE DESCRIPTION - Walk 6, Buckland Common and Chartridge
OS Explorer Maps required: 181
Approximate distance: 12.1 miles
Start at Buckland Common, at the small parking area by the telephone box (SP 921071).
CLOCKWISE
Follow Little Twye Road away from the centre of the village. Continue past the end of the green on your right, and on past a house. When the road bends to the right, take the footpath continuing ahead (part of the Chiltern Way, which this walk follows for the first mile and a quarter). The path crosses a field, goes over a drive and continues along the right-hand hedge of a paddock. In the next field, turn right alongside the hedge to reach a stile. The path then continues between a fence and a hedge on the right – there are usually Alpaca in the paddocks on either side. Follow the waymarked path through Drayton Wood, bearing left at the first path junction then right at the second, then follow the path from the wood between paddocks. Cross Shire Lane, and continue on the path that now goes half-left through a small wood and goes on to reach a belt of trees going right. Turn right and follow the path through the belt of trees, alongside Grim’s Ditch. At the end of the tree belt, turn right onto a track (leaving the Chiltern Way at this point). Continue on the track through Shrubb’s Wood and into High Scrubs Wood – initially there is a field on your right, then a section of the wood and then a grassy field. At the end of this field, take the path right that crosses the field beside the hedge (on your left) – WARNING: there are show-jumping fences set in the hedge, so beware leaping horses! Re-cross Shire Lane and take the path a few yards to the left. Follow this, initially between fences and then through a wood with paddocks on the left. At a junction at the end of the paddocks turn left to cross the paddocks with a hedge on your right. Continue on the path through a small wood and some scrubland to reach the deep ditch and embankments encircling the Iron Age hill fort of Cholesbury Camp (SP 929073).
Turn left and follow the path along the ditch. Follow it as it curves right, then when a slightly raised path crosses the ditch (by a metal field gate on the left), the path leaves the ditch and follows the bank on the right. Eventually it goes over two stiles in quick succession, across some paddocks within the camp and then through the churchyard of St Laurence’s Church, passing to the right of the church. Before reaching the gate of the churchyard, it goes right and follows the bank and ditch back to where you first reached them (by a noticeboard, now to your right).
Now take the path across the camp, which passes to the right of the village hall to reach the main road through Cholesbury. Go a few yards to the right and take the footpath on the other side. This passes between gardens then follows a left-hand fence downhill. At the bottom of the valley turn left, following another left-hand fence with views of Cholesbury Windmill ahead, to reach another road. Take the path almost opposite, initially along a drive and passing a house and gardens on the left. At a junction (arrows painted on a tree) ignore the path forking right into a wood, and continue ahead on this path along the valley bottom for about a mile and a half. It soon enters a stretch of woodland, but then runs through a sequence of mainly pastures. Ignore numerous paths going left and right, just follow the path along the valley bottom. When the path eventually enters a wood (Ramscoat Wood), turn right to take the track going steadily uphill through the wood. Follow this as it turns right along the opposite edge of the wood. It turns left, then right again, then at the end of the wood take a footpath on the left. This follows a right-hand hedge a short distance across a field. In the field corner turn left. Continue ahead at the next field corner, now with a stable and then garden fences on the right, to reach a road (between Great Hivings and Bellingdon, to the right) (SP 953039).
Take the path opposite, along the drive to Mount Nugent Farm. Where the drive turns left, the path goes straight on through a sequence of gates, continuing between hedges to reach Captain’s Wood. Turn right after entering the wood. When this path leaves the wood (just after another path forks right), turn left and follow the hedge on your left downhill. Halfway up the opposite side of this steep valley the path switches to the left of the hedgerow. At the road at the top of the hill, turn right. Follow the road very carefully for about 200 yards or so, then take the bridleway on the left immediately after a house. This descends another steep valley, soon switching to the left of the hedge, and rises up the other side (initially on a narrow path between hedges then on a track with a caravan site on the left) to reach the main road through Chartridge (SP 937036).
Turn right and follow the road through the village for about half a mile, before turning left into Cogdells Lane. This lane soon becomes a farm drive, and when the drive turns left carry on ahead along a hedged bridleway, which soon turns right. On reaching a wood, take the track that goes almost straight ahead. On the far side of the wood, turn right. Continue on this path through woods for about three-quarters of a mile as it gradually turns to the left. On finally exiting Lownde’s Wood, follow the path across a pasture, and then alongside a right-hand hedge through a second pasture to reach a road (north of Lee Common) (SP 912044).
Turn right, and when you reach a T-junction continue ahead on a footpath, initially to the left of a hedgerow. The path goes through a kissing gate in the field corner and continues downhill. The path then passes to the right of a wood as it goes up the opposite slope, before following a left-hand hedge. It switches to the left of the hedge just before meeting a bridleway, which you follow ahead to reach Arrewig Lane. Turn right, but shortly take the path on the left immediately before Erriwig Farm. This follows a headland between fields and then enters a long thin wood called Lady Grove, where it turns left. At a path junction turn right. The path leaves the wood, crosses some waste ground by some pits and joins a drive to Dundridge Manor farm. Follow the path round to the right of the farm and across a field. Go through a gap in the hedgerow and turn left. Turn right along the tarmac drive from the Manor to the road. Carefully follow the road to the left, go right at a road junction, and take the next turning on the left to return to your starting point.
Cholesbury Camp is an Iron Age hill fort, one of the best preserved in the Chilterns. A large ditch between two high banks runs almost the complete circuit of the oval enclosure, with a second ditch and further banks visible in the west and south-east. The ramparts are now crowned by a belt of beech trees, except in the southernmost section where the houses and gardens of Cholesbury have encroached. The camp is thought to have been in use from between about 300BC to 50 AD, but excavations have shown that it was only ever sparsely populated, and perhaps only used in times of danger. St Laurence’s church was built within the enclosure in the 13th century, but was much modified in the 1870’s.
Cholesbury Windmill, originally built as a smock mill in 1863 but rebuilt as a tower mill twenty years later, is a private residence with an interesting history. It was associated with the Bloomsbury Group around the time of the First World War and a number of well-known artists of the period frequented it. According to Wikipedia, "Gilbert Cannan who rented the mill for a time and whose wife Mary was previously married to J.M Barrie, the author of Peter Pan, invited his friends including D.H.Lawrence, Katherine Mansfield and John Middleton Murry to stay there. The artist Mark Gertler, also lived there for a time and painted a famous picture of the mill now on show in the Ashmolean Museum in Oxford with Cannan and his dogs in the foreground. One of the dogs is understood to have been the model for the original illustrations of Nana the dog in the first edition of Peter Pan."