Pete's Walks - Little Missenden and The Lee (page 2 of 3)
If you are considering walking this route yourself, please see my disclaimer. You may also like to see these notes about the maps.
After a while the bridleway turned half-left, now just inside the edge of Atkins Wood. Immediately after the bridleway turned right, I went left through a metal kissing-gate and after just a few yards turned right (there was no waymark or sign here, but I could see a faint white arrow on a tree about 20 yards along the path). The path continued through the wood (mainly beech) to the far side, where I turned left at a path T-junction. On leaving the wood, the path followed a hedge on my right, staying with it as it turned left and then right. I then turned right through a gate, following a short path through the grounds of Ardlows Farm and turning left along the farm drive to reach a road on the edge of Prestwood.
Atkins Wood (where I turned right after going through the metal gate)
Further along that path
The path in Atkins Wood after I turned left
The path continuing from Atkins Wood to Andlows Farm
The path continuing from Atkins Wood to Andlows Farm
The path past Andlows Farm
I turned right for just a short distance, then took a footpath on the right, immediately leaving Prestwood and heading gently downhill through a grassy meadow to reach Angling Spring Wood (apparently a haven for a variety of fungi, though I didn't spot any today). At the entrance to the wood an old metal kissing-gate had been left in situ when it had been replaced by a new wooden one. The path continued gently downhill through the attractive wood for several hundred yards - in the middle of the wood a couple coming the other way asked if I was an ornithologist (I think they mistook the camera-case hanging round my neck for binoculars) and we had an interesting chat about wildlife (apparently Prestwood church, which I've passed on other walks, is also a good spot for fungi). Beyond the wood, the path continued gently downhill beside a hedge on my right past another grassy meadow sloping up to my left.
The path from Prestwood to Angling Spring Wood
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Angling Spring Wood
Angling Spring Wood
Angling Spring Wood
Angling Spring Wood
The path continuing from Angling Spring Wood to Great Missenden
On reaching a gate, I went a few yards left of it and took a path going half-left between fences that took me to a private road in Great Missenden. I turned left and followed it to its end, where I turned right and followed a road over a railway bridge into the centre of Great Missenden. I turned right at a mini-roundabout, and almost immediately came to a second one - I wanted to go left here, but first went on a few yards to reach the entrance to Great Missenden library (another slight detour in the guidebook). The road going left took me out of the village and to a roundabout on the A413 main road. I crossed over the road just right of the roundabout, then took a path starting by the roundabout that followed a hedge on the right steadily uphill (out of the Misbourne valley).
Approaching Great Missenden
The private road in Great Missenden
Great Missenden (from the bridge over the railway)
The road I took out of Great Missenden
The start of the path to Ballinger Common