Pete's Walks- Buckland Common and Chartridge (page 5 of 5)
Across Shire Lane a path followed a hedge across a large grass field - there were horse jumps in this field, in the hedge and in the field beyond the hedge. On entering a wood called High Scrubs, I turned left on a public byway called Browns Lane which headed northwest through the attractive wood. After about half a mile, just beyond a crossing path, the wood became Shrubb's Wood and now there were fields just to my left.
The path across Shire Lane going to High Scrubs
The byway through High Scrubs
The byway through High Scrubs
The byway through High Scrubs
The byway through High Scrubs
The byway through Shrubb's Wood
Beyond Shrubb's Wood, Browns Lane continued as a track between hedges. After three or four hundred yards, I turned left onto a footpath (part of the Chiltern Way, which I'd now be following for all but the final few yards of the walk). This ran through a belt of beech trees and Holly bushes, along the line of the ancient earthwork of Grim's Ditch. At the end of the tree belt I followed a hedge a little way left, then went half-right across an arable field and through a small wood to return to Shire Lane.
Browns Lane, beyond Shrubb's Wood
The path through the tree belt along along Grim's Ditch
The Chiltern Way, heading to a small wood and back to Shire Lane
The small wood before Shire Lane
Across Shire Lane, a path led between paddocks back to another part of Drayton Wood (which I'd entered briefly just after Cholesbury Camp). I soon forked left at a path junction, but started to get worried as the next section of the path seemed much longer than I remembered - in fact the OS map is a bit misleading, as the next junction (where I forked right) is further on and closer to the edge of the wood than the map indicates. On leaving the wood, the path continued between a hedge and a fence on the right - there used to be alpacas in the enclosures here, but not today. The path then followed a hedge on the left for a short distance in a large empty pasture. Through a gate in this hedge, I followed the left edge of a triangular paddock with a couple of horses in it. Across the drive to Bucklandwood Farm, the path crossed an arable field to a lane, which I then followed right, back downhill into Buckland Common and my waiting car.
Path through Drayton Wood
View as the path exits from Drayton Wood - there used to be alpacas here, but not today
The path through the triangular paddock
The last field before the lane into Buckland Common
The lane into Buckland Common
After a grey start, the skies had cleared and I'd been walking in glorious sunshine. The trees were close to their splendid autumnal best, and this more than compensated for the slightly muddy conditions. Much of the walk was fairly familiar to me (in fact I'd walked large parts of it with my friend Martin Gregory just a few weeks ago), but there were some sections (near Chartridge and along White Hawley Bottom, for instance) that I'd not visited for over four years. It was a nice walk with a good mix of woodland and field paths, several ups and downs, and a bit of historic interest in Cholesbury Camp and Grim's Ditch.