Pete's Walks - Cadmore End, Radnage, Crowell Hill (page 6 of 6)
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.
A path went left here, but I took the leftmost of two paths continuing along the valley (the rightmost one stays on the track for maybe another hundred yards then turns right to head up to Ibstone). After about another half a mile the path merged with a bridleway, which continued along the wooded valley. After maybe another quarter of a mile, just past where a bridleway came in on the right, I turned left along a bridleway on a farm track, which the OS map shows leads to Harecramp cottages. Just before reaching the cottages. immediately after reaching the end of a field on my right, a path went over a stile in a hedge on the right and crossed a large empty sheep pasture to another stile just left of a gate.
The path continuing south from Twigside Bottom
Fungi (Armillaria sp.)
The path continuing south from Twigside Bottom
After the path merged with a bridleway
After the path merged with a bridleway
The track to Harecramp Cottages, after I turned left from the bridleway
The track to Harecramp Cottages
The path going east from Harecramp Cottages
I crossed Chequers Lane (it starts or ends opposite the Chequers pub in Fingest) and took a bridleway on the other side. This ran just inside the eastern edge of Hanger Wood, gradually rising uphill. After about a third of a mile. the bridleway left the wood and turned right, following a hedgerow on my right, still rising uphill and then levelling out after the second field on my left. Shortly before the track reached a gate, the bridleway went half-left through a small triangle of trees to reach a track. Here I turned left to reach Cadmore End in about a quarter of a mile, where I turned left to return to where I'd parked.
The start of the bridleway to Cadmore End, on the edge of Hanger Wood
The bridleway to Cadmore End
The bridleway to Cadmore End
The bridleway to Cadmore End
The bridleway to Cadmore End
The bridleway to Cadmore End
The track into Cadmore End, after I turned left
View right, from near Cadmore End
Cadmore End
I enjoyed this walk, the route really suited me today. It's a couple of years since I've walked it, and that time I did it the other way round, and though most of it follows paths that I use on other routes I didn't seem to have walked many of these paths since then. It was also easier than I'd expected - I recalled it as being quite a tiring walk, but the alternative I took at the end of the walk seemed to make a big difference - it not only shortened the route by almost half a mile, but avoided a steep climb up to Hanger Wood which would have been a struggle at the end of the walk. Certainly in this direction, I think this alternative route is actually preferable.