Pete's Walks - Whitchurch Hill, College Wood, Mapledurham (page 1 of 5)
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 did this circular walk of about 9.6 miles on Friday, 23rd July 2022. It was a new route for me, with about half of it on paths I'd never walked before. As usual I came up with this route by studying the OS map and trying to link up some paths I'd not walked before into a 'circular' route. I chose to start at Whitchurch Hill, as there were several paths nearby that I'd yet to walk. I'd only started walks at Whitchurch Hill twice before, when I walked the Chiltern Way in 2005 and 2007. The reason I've not been back there for fifteen years is largely due to the fact it takes me almost an hour and a half to drive there.
I parked beside the playing field at the southern tip of Whitchurch Hill (Grid Reference SU 637787) and started walking about 10am. I followed the lane north east along the edge of the village, then turned left along a gravel bridle way (the road sign here said 'Bridle Road'). After about a third of a mile I reached a lane, where I crossed over and continued along a bridleway on the other side,
The road through Whitchurch Hill
The bridleway through Whitchurch Hill
The bridleway through Whitchurch Hill
The bridleway going north from Whitchurch Hill, after crossing a lane
The bridleway going north from Whitchurch Hill
On reaching a wood called Great Oaks the bridleway went slightly right, but I continued straight on along a footpath. I kept left at a junction with another path, then at a fork where the path turned right I took the right fork (3rd photo below). On reaching a road I crossed over and continued down Eastfield Lane (a roughly surfaced track). Immediately before this bent slightly right, I turned right onto a crossing footpath - this was the first bit of the walk that wasn't new to me.
The footpath through Great Oaks
The footpath through Great Oaks
The footpath through Great Oaks
Eastfield Lane
The path after turning left from Eastfield Lane
After a few hundred yards through a wood, I turned left at a path T-junction in a nice area of beech trees. At the next path junction I forked right (the white arrows were on a tree on the left), now again on a path I'd not walked before. Initially the path was easy to follow through the wood with white arrows pointing the way, but then I came to a very narrow fork with no white arrow telling me which way to go. After a bit of dithering I took the right fork (though the left fork seemed most heavily used), and after a short distance I was relieved to spot a white arrow on a tree ahead - from the fork it had been hidden from view by a protruding bit of Holly. The path was then easy to follow and soon led to a minor road.
The path after turning left from Eastfield Lane, approaching the path T-junction, where I turned left
The path after turning left at the path T-junction
The path after I forked right
Further along the same path - there is a white arrow on the tree in the centre of this shot, hidden by part of a Holly bush