ROUTE DESCRIPTION - Walk 14, West Wycombe and Fingest
OS Explorer Maps required: 171, 172
Approximate distance: 14.0 miles
Start at village car park in West Wycombe (SU 826947).
ANTI-CLOCKWISE
From the car park, cross the road and take the path through the grass opposite, going steadily uphill, with the mausoleum above you to the left. Near the top of the hill, the path reaches a junction with another path, where you turn left to reach the top of the hill. Pass to the left of the mausoleum and then follow the path with the church on your right. Continue ahead across the car park and then across grass to join a level path continuing ahead, initially with a holly hedge on the right. Stay on this good path for about a mile, passing through Hearnton Wood, until you reach Nobles Farm. Continue ahead on the tarmac farm drive for about half a mile - it enters a wood, and near the far side there is a small area of grass on the left. Here you take the path going half-left downhill through bushes and steeply down across a meadow to a lane. Turn left, then just after the lane turns left take the footpath on the right and follow it uphill with a hedge or fence on your left. On reaching the end of a lane, follow the lane ahead to reach Chinnor Road (SU 805969).
Turn right into Bledlow Ridge, and take the first footpath on the left (by some tennis courts and a children’s playground). This follows the right edge of a playing field, then follows the edge of a paddock, before descending steep wooden steps through a wood to reach a lane (Bottom Road). Continue on the bridleway almost opposite, which descends to the bottom of the valley and then rises uphill – it follows a field edge, although there seems to be a path through a tree belt on the right. At the top of the hill you reach part of Radnage. Turn left for a short distance, then turn right down a lane (beside a converted chapel). At the end of the lane, take the path going left along a valley bottom (with a hedge on the RIGHT), to reach the western tip of Bottom Wood (a nature reserve). Continue on the path ahead, with a hedgeline on your right, until you reach the A40 at Studley Green (SU 792951).
Go a short way to the right, carefully cross over and take the path entering the wood. Almost immediately bear half-left at a junction, and continue on that line over some other minor path junctions (white arrows on trees show the route of the footpath). At a footpath junction in the wood, quite close to a field corner, turn left. The path comes close to the A40 again at one point, before turning right and going downhill. When this path finally leaves the wood, continue ahead with a hedgerow on your right. At the path junction in the next field corner turn right (with a hedge initially on your left) and follow the path through a long thin belt of trees. Continue on through Barn Wood and Leygrove’s Wood. The path, now a forestry track, crosses a small gap to a third wood (a large section on the right has just been felled). After a few hundred yards (shortly before a bend to the left), take the path on the left through the trees, which soon reaches another track, Follow this left, passing under the M40 to reach a road on the edge of Cadmore End (SU 784927).
Turn right, then take the lane going sharp left (you can cut the corner by crossing the grass common here). Just past the church (on your left) take the bridleway going right. Keep left at a bridleway junction. When the bridleway enters Hanger wood, take the footpath forking right, and follow this all the way through the wood, and continue on it between hedges and fences to reach Fingest, opposite the church (SU 777913).
Turn left, then left again at the T-junction. Follow the road for quarter of a mile, then take the bridleway on the left. This soon turns to the right. When you come to a fork, keep right (leaving the bridleway for a footpath). Continue on the path as it follows the right-hand boundary of a large field. In the next field, the hedge on the right soon turns right at a path junction – follow the hedge to reach a lane. Take the new permissive path to the right of the lane, then take the footpath on the left (where the lane turns right). The path goes uphill along the edge of a cattle pasture, and over a stile where the boundary turns left. It continues between a hedge and a fence on the right, beside a wood. It continues beside the wood through a meadow, turning left beside a hedge at the next corner. It then continues through a wood. When it leaves the wood, it runs along the edge of a field beside it. It then goes through a kissing-gate into Fining Wood, where you almost immediately turn right. Watch for arrows on trees and waymarks. The path forks left at one point, soon joining a wider track. There is then a fork where a bridleway goes right – keep left, on the footpath. Continue on this path through the wood, going over a footbridge and up some steps, then between hedges until you reach an unmade road at Ditchfield Common. Follow this to the left, passing a pub on the right and going between a number of parked vehicles in a rather industrial area, to reach a minor road south of the church in Lane End (SU 806915).
Cross the road and walk straight ahead through the trees to a brick wall. Turn left and follow the path along the wall. The path passes right in front of a large house, then goes slightly right to cross a drive and continue as an alley into the centre of Lane End. Cross the road and continue on the path opposite, to the left of a pub. The surfaced path crosses a road at one point, and continues to a metal kissing-gate on the edge of the village. Go straight on here for a few yards, then turn right through a second metal kissing-gate. Immediately bear left at a fork. Follow this path to a junction by a footpath finger-post (half-hidden on the right), where you turn left and cross two pastures to reach a drive. Continue ahead on the path through the wood, which turns left to emerge near a road.
Follow the road to the right, over the M40, then take the footpath on the left (initially with a wood to your right). In the field corner, some way beyond the end of the wood, turn right over a stile, and cross a paddock to the end of a hedge on the left. Turn left here (still in the paddock) and go over another stile and continue along the track ahead of you. When the path reaches the corner of a wood (on the left), leave the track and take the path running just inside the edge of the wood. After about quarter of a mile, just after a gate on the right, the path bears right through the trees to emerge from the woods a few yards on from a broken stile. Turn left and follow the edge of the wood to the corner of the field. The path then goes slightly right to a gate, and goes steeply uphill through part of the same wood. Immediately after going over a crossing path, the path goes fractionally left into the trees (NOT the clear track continuing ahead - the path is parallel to the track, a yard or two to its left). On emerging from the wood, the path follows a hedgerow on the right to reach a tarmac drive in Towerage. Go left, then right at a junction, to go downhill to the A40. Cross carefully and follow the road to the right into West Wycombe, turning left at the first junction to return to the car park.
Unsurprisingly, West Wycombe lies to the west of High Wycombe. It is a very attractive village with many fine buildings from the 16th to 18th centuries dotted along the A40, the old London-Oxford road. The village was sold to the National Trust in 1929 by the Dashwood family, who needed to raise money after the Wall Street Crash. The Italianate West Wycombe Park was built for Sir Francis Dashwood in the middle of the 18th century. The church, also 18th century, stands on top of West Wycombe Hill and is a prominent landmark – the golden ball at the top of the tower seats eight people, and gives panoramic views. The hilltop was once the site of an Iron Age hill fort, and as well as the church it is now surmounted by the Dashwood family mausoleum, inspired by the Colosseum in Rome. At the foot of the hill are the Hellfire Caves – thought to be of ancient origin, they were extended by Sir Francis Dashwood in the 1740’s and later used as a meeting place for his notorious Hellfire Club.
According to different sources, the name Fingest derives from the Anglo-Saxon ‘Thinghurst’ meaning ‘wooded hill where assemblies meet’, or it is from the Norse for ‘meeting place in a spinney’ – take your pick!. The church of St Bartholomew has a massive Norman tower surmounted by a double gable – there is thought to be only one other similar arrangement in the country. The tower is also unusual in being wider than the nave – these are the two oldest components of the church, the chancel being added in the 13th century. Inside the church there is a 15th century octagonal font.