Pete's Walks - Cowleaze Wood, Chinnor, Ibstone (page 4 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.
I continued down the street which soon dropped slightly downhill, then at a junction I went straight on down a farm drive (the sign said Chiltern End Farm, the OS Map says it's Coopers Court Farm). Just after this went under the M40, I turned left and followed a farm track that soon curved slightly right and downhill. At one point the path should have forked slightly right from the track, but there was no waymark or any sign of the path, so I stayed on the track until just after it turned right, when I went over a stile on the left into Penley Wood (this is where the vanished path should have brought me). The wood was refreshingly green in the Spring sunshine, as I followed the path along a valley bottom. The path soon turned right, then curved left in almost a large semi-circle. After a bout half a mile, shortly after a path had come down steeply on the left (from Penley Farm), I took a path on the right.
The start of the path from Coopers Court Farm (or Chiltern End Farm, according to the sign at the start of its drive)
The path from Coopers Court Farm
The path from Coopers Court Farm, just after entering Penley Wood
Penley Wood
Penley Wood
Penley Wood
The path left the wood after a few yards and continued gently uphill across a large arable field. It then continued for a few hundred yards between bushes and trees. On reaching a path junction, I turned left, the path running a short way through trees to reach a field, where it turned right, dropping downhill along the edge of the field with a wood on my right (I spotted a Muntjac here). At the corner of the field in the valley bottom, I took the right-most of two paths at a junction, which soon turned left and headed steadily uphill through Hartmoor Wood. When I reached the top of the slope, the path went through a gate and followed a wicker fence on my left through part of a a garden to reach a road just as it entered Ibstone, where I turned left.
The path after I turned right and left Penley Wood
Further along that path
The next path, after I turned left
The path through Hartsmoor Wood, heading up to Ibstone
The path through Hartsmoor Wood, heading up to Ibstone
The path through Hartsmoor Wood, heading up to Ibstone
The path through Hartsmoor Wood, heading up to Ibstone
The path through Hartsmoor Wood, following the garden fence
The road at Ibstone