Pete's Walks - Pitstone Hill and Wigginton (page 1 of 2)
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 11.6 mile circular walk on Sunday 9th May, 2010. It was another repeat of Walk 4 of my Chiltern Chain Walk, a walk that I have now done several times in both directions. If you are interested in walking this route yourself, click here to see the route description (but only if you have already read my disclaimer and notes regarding route descriptions).
Yet again the BBC's weather site let me down - on Saturday the forecast for the next day was sunny intervals, so I was not exactly overjoyed to wake up to a grey and rather damp morning, especially when the forecast on teletext confirmed it would be like that for most of the day. But I decided to go ahead and do this walk, which is becoming one of my favourite shorter walks in this area - it would be quite convenient as I would be home in plenty of time for a family gathering in the late afternoon.
It was very grey as I set off from the car park at Pitstone Hill about 9.15am, so the views from the little hillock and Pitstone Hill itself were very limited. There were lots of Cowslips on the grassy slopes, and as I followed Grims Ditch down the western side of the hill I sow my first Silverweed and Birdsfoot Trefoil of the year. Further on, by the Aldbury Nowers nature reserve I saw my first Common Milkwort of the year.
The hillock between the car park and Pitstone Hill
Pitstone Hill from the hillock
Murky view across the 'Tring Gap' towards Wigginton, from Pitstone Hill
Another view towards Wigginton, from near the Aldbury Nowers nature reserve
Continuing along the route of the Ridgeway path, I passed through Tring Station and crossed the Grand Union Canal. A footpath then led between fences through the grounds of Pendley Manor, now a hotel. I crossed the impressive foot bridge over the A41 dual carriageway, and followed a hedgeline towards Wigginton. I crossed a lane at one point, where the verge contained Greater Stitchwort, Bluebells, Yellow Archangel, Herb Robert, White Deadnettle and Goldilocks Buttercup. As I reached the village of Wigginton, I spotted a Red Kite nearby.
The Ridgeway path, on the way to Tring Station
Grand Union Canal at Tring Station
The path through the grounds of Pendley Manor
The path to Wigginton
View towards the Vale of Aylesbury, from the path to Wigginton
The Vale of Aylesbury, seen from the edge of Wigginton
From Wigginton, I headed back downhill through a sequence of meadows to reach Lower Wood, where there were many Wood Anemones and Lesser Celandine, though past their best now. It was now drizzling a little, though it never got very heavy. I then followed a fence through a large paddock and crossed a corner of a filed of oil-seed rape, before passing under the A41 and taking a long roughly surfaced track between hedges to Cow Roast (there were dog obedience classes going on in the playing fields on my right, something I've seen many times here - there was also a football game and some archery going on).
The start of the path through the meadows from Wigginton
The path through the meadows from Wigginton
The path through Lower Wood
I included this photo just to add a bit of colour! The path through the oil-seed rape field after Lower Wood
The track to Cow Roast