Pete's Walks - The Chiltern Way
If you are considering walking this route yourself, please see my disclaimer. You may also like to see these notes about the maps and GPX files.
Day 20 25/07/05 Woodcote to Ewelme (Potter’s Lane) (7.6 miles each way)
Parked at village hall in Woodcote.
This was a rather non-descript walk, certainly the least interesting walk on the Chiltern Way for some time. It didn’t pass anywhere of interest, and went through the ‘foothills’ of the Chilterns, below the main escarpment, rather than the Chilterns themselves. To be fair, if it had been a nice warm day with blue skies I would probably have thought it a perfectly reasonable walk. Unfortunately it was grey and overcast all day - there was a light drizzle when I started off, and I wore my waterproofs for most of the day because even when the drizzle stopped I was still getting wet from the damp grass, trees and bushes. It was also quite cool. The skies brightened up a little in the afternoon (turning more white than grey!) so the views improved a little.
Woodcote 26/10/015
The way from Woodcote started off down a lane. It then left the lane to pass through a garden only to rejoin the same lane 100 yards further on, at least according to the guide book. When I got to the end of the garden, the gate to the lane was bolted so I turned round and went back and just carried on down the lane - totally pointless! Why go through someone’s garden when you could just carry on down the same lane for a 100 yards? Seemed a daft bit of route planning to me. Anyway, from there the way led alongside a paddock, crossed a main road, through another field to a quiet lane. Leaving this lane after a 100 yards, a track lead to a (damp) woodland section, then downhill across a field (where I saw hares each time I crossed it) to a lane in a valley bottom. After a quarter of a mile, the way left the lane, crossing the extensive garden of a farm, across a field (where there were some exotic birds, guinea fowl or such like) and then uphill through more woodland to eventually reach another lane.
This lane was left almost immediately, the path passing through more woodland and then downhill across two fields to reach the corner of another lane. Within yards, the path left this lane and went round the sides of two fields to reach a road. This was followed for a few yards, before a track along a hedge row (at first the boundary of Wellplace Zoo, from whence I could hear more exotic birds) went uphill again to reach a lane at the hamlet of Hailey. From here I followed Poors Lane to Poors Farm, where the lane became a farm track and later a path, leading into another wood. On the other side of the wood, at another farm, I followed another farm track to a lane, part of the Icknield Way. There then followed the longest stretch of lane/road walking I have come across so far, as I followed that lane for ¾ mile (crossing the Ridgeway at one point) and then turned off onto another lane for a further third of a mile.
A path beside a wood then led to another crossing of a main road, before another woodland section (lots of ‘Private - Keep Out’ and ‘Keep to the footpath’ type signs), a field crossing (good views of Red Kites!) and a fenced path led on to a minor road. Across this, part of ‘Old London Road’ was followed (I’d used another part of the same old road on Day 16) to Potter’s Farm, and then from there a farm track led to Potter’s Lane, where the southern extension that I’ve been following for the last few days rejoined the original route. As with the first time I reached this point (see Day 16), there was a distinct whiff of pigs here.
On the return journey in the afternoon, the skies had brightened a little and the views were better. As well as Didcot Power Station (a blot on the landscape if ever I saw one), I could see Wittenham Clumps, a pair of small but prominent hills both topped with a circle of trees. One of them is the site of a hill fort, and the Time Team program did an archaeological dig there in 2004.
The best bit of today’s walk was probably the wildlife. When I stopped for lunch (on a stile, just before starting the long lane walk again), a Bullfinch perched just a few feet from me for several seconds, only my second sighting of one this year. There were plenty of Red Kites (four together over a wood at one point), a couple of Fallow Deer bucks (judging by their antlers) and a brief glimpse of a Muntjac deer, as well as the Hares I’ve already mentioned.
Total distance: 147 miles (each way)