Pete's Walks- Hambleden, Marlow Common, Moorend Common (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.

Google map of the walkDownload GPX file of the walk

NOTE: You now have to pay to use the car park in Hambleden. I usually manage to park along the village street to the west of the church (looking at the church from the village centre, take the street on the left and follow it round to the right).

I did this circular walk of about 10 miles on Friday, June 2nd, 2017. It was a shortened version of my Hambleden, Bovingdon Green, Frieth (anti-clockwise) walk, with the twin aims of, firstly, allowing me to look for orchids at Homefield Wood and Moorend Common, and, secondly, to visit Marlow Common for the first time. There were a couple of paths on the route that I'd never walked before.

I parked in the car park at Hambleden (grid reference SU 785866), and started walking at roughly 10:15am. From the end of the car park I turned left along a playing field, turning right for a few yards when I reached a hedge, then going through a gap in the hedge and continuing along a track for a few yards. I then turned left, onto a path that climbed steadily uphill beside a field on my right. Towards the top of the slope the path continued through a wood. Where another field appeared on the right, I went through a metal kissing-gate, the path continuing beside the wood for a while before carrying on along a track between fields.

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The sports field at Hambleden - the path goes through the gap in the hedge by the second seat, where I turned right down a track

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The start of the footpath to Rotten Row

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The footpath to Rotten Row

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The footpath to Rotten Row, just before I left the wood through a kissing-gate on the right

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The footpath to Rotten Row

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The footpath to Rotten Row

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The footpath to Rotten Row

On reaching a lane, I turned left and followed it the short distance to the hamlet of Rotten Row. When the lane turned left, I went straight on along a footpath that crossed a hay meadow that was currently being mown, an activity that had attracted about a dozen Red Kites and a Buzzard. The path then crossed a huge pasture with a few sheep nearby and some cattle  a long way away to my right.

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The lane through Rotten Row

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The path from Rotten Row to Heath Wood

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The path from Rotten Row to Heath Wood

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View right from near the end of the path from Rotten Row

On the far side of the pasture I turned right along a lane. On previous walks I'd always used the first footpath I came to on the left, but today I continued further down the lane and took the next path on the left. This crossed a gravel drive and entered Homefield Wood, staying close to a garden on the right and then turning right, behind the bottom of the garden. It then turned left and dropped quite steeply down into a valley bottom, where I turned right onto another path.

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The lane beside Heath and Homefield Woods

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The path from the lane going through Homefield Wood

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The path from the lane going through Homefield Wood

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The path from the lane going through Homefield Wood

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The path from the lane going through Homefield Wood - lighter green strip going across the photo is the bottom of the valley ,where I turned right