Pete's Walks- Cowleaze Wood, Chinnor, Ibstone (page 6 of 7)
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.
Eventually, the path started to climb fairly gently up through the wood. I normally come this way right at the end of a walk (when I'm finishing at Christmas Common or Watlington Hill) and so usually find it rather tiring, but today I wasn't quite on my last legs and seemed to make faster progress than usual. In any case, the path is never very steep, the steepest bit being a very short stretch through beech trees towards the top. When I did reach the top, I came to a path T-junction where I turned right, but only for one or two hundred yards before turning left onto another path. This continued through what was now Shotridge Wood, turning right just before coming to another path junction, where I went straight on down a drive to reach a minor road, with Christmas Common just to my left.
The path through Blackmoor Wood
The path continuing through Shotridge Wood
The path continuing through Shotridge Wood
The path in Shotridge Wood after I turned right and just before I turned left
The end of the path through Shotridge Wood where it follows a drive
I went a short way right along the road, then turned left along a bridleway that started with hedges either side. After a path came in from the left, the path started dropping downhill with a wood on my left. I usually describe the slope as Pyrton Hill (Pyrton Hill House is at the bottom) but it's really the end of the valley between Watlington Hill and Pyrton Hill, which I could see over to my right (unusually there were no Fallow Deer to be seen there today).
The minor road going north from Christmas Common
View from near the start of the bridleway to Pyrton after I turned left from the road
The bridleway to Pyrton
The bridleway to Pyrton
The bridleway to Pyrton
The bridleway to Pyrton
Looking right to Pyrton Hill - unusually there was no sign of any Fallow Deer there today
The bridleway descending to Pyrton
Towards the bottom of the slope I joined the drive from Pyrton Hill House (there was also a 'cat hotel' and a timber merchants here). I followed it for several hundred yards, ignoring the path on the right that I usually take to Shirburn Hill, and then turned right onto another part of the Ridgeway. This now ran for about half a mile with tall hedges either side, with flat fields beyond them.
The start of the second section of the Ridgeway that I walked today
The Ridgeway
The Ridgeway