Pete's Walks- Pitstone Hill, Cow Roast, Aldbury (page 2 of 4)
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.
I followed the road until it reached the Grand Union Canal, where I went down some steps on the right and turned left to follow the canal under the road. I then followed the canal towpath for about a mile and a half until it reached a marina and a lock at Cow Roast.
The Grand Union Canal
The Grand Union Canal
The Grand Union Canal
The Grand Union Canal
The Grand Union Canal
The Grand Union Canal, approaching the lock at Cow Roast
At the lock I left the canal, turning left and following a lane, which immediately turned right to run parallel to the canal. After a couple of hundred yards or so I took a footpath on the left, which crossed a field and then went over a footbridge across a railway line (the main west-coast line). The path continued across another field, then turned right at a path T- junction, following the fence of some enclosures containing Alpacas on my left. I soon reached another path T-junction, where I went left. This path brought me to the drive to Norcott Court Farm, which I followed left for a few yards before taking a path on the right along the edge of the farmyard.
The path from Cow Roast to Norcott Court Farm
The path from Cow Roast to Norcott Court Farm
The path then went half-left across a grassy field, sloping slightly uphill on my right. In the corner of this field I went through a gate, then followed the edge of another field until the field boundary turned left for a few yards - here I went right, over a stile, and then half left across another sloping grassy field. In the corner I went through a gate (or over a stile, I can't quite remember) and followed the edge of a wood on my right for a few yards until I reached a tall gate and a path junction.
The footpath from Norcott Court Farm
View left from the footpath from Norcott Court Farm
The footpath from Norcott Court Farm
I'd intended to take the path through the tall gate, which goes to Tom's Hill, but on the spur of the moment I changed my mind. Several times when I've been at this point I've thought that I really ought to walk the other path here sometime, and I just thought that today was as good a time as any to finally do this. So I took the path leading from the gate across a sheep pasture, turning right on the other side and following the hedge (there was a big gap with a barn on the other side) to a gate and a lane (there were numerous sheep sheltering under the hedge, somehow I didn't notice them until one moved). That was the end of me being adventurous, as when I then turned right along the lane I was back on a route I'd walked a couple of times before (on this Ashridge and Aldbury walk). After a hundred yards or so, I turned left along a grey track (made of the same material as some horse gallops around the fields I was about to walk through). Beyond a small barn (where I crossed one such gallop), the path continued as a more usual farm track. The track turned right for a few yards, then left as it followed a hedgerow. In the next corner the path turned right and continued for several hundred yards until it reached a path junction at the field corner, by a bend in a minor road.
The first new bit of path I walked - you can see it cross this sheep pasture, it continues this side of the hedge to reach a lane.
The next footpath, on the other side of the lane (Aldbury Nowers is in the distance on the right)
Further along the same path
The same path after it turns right
The same path, approaching the bend in the road