Pete's Walks - Cowleaze Wood, Crowell, Stokenchurch (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.
On entering Crowell Wood, I turned left along a bridleway (again I was back on familiar territory), almost immediately coming to a bridleway junction where I kept left, following the bridleway gently uphill along a groove (possibly another 'hollow way') - there was an unofficial path just a few yards to the left, presumably used when this bridleway gets too muddy (as I know it can do). The bridleway soon brought me back to the lane I'd briefly touched on before, by Crowellhill Farm, where I turned right and followed the lane through Sprig's Alley. After three or four hundred yards a path went left, and from this point I started another lengthy section of the route that was new to me. I passed a sign saying the lane was now called Sprigs Holly Lane, and after another three or four hundred yards I took a footpath on the right.
The bridleway after I turned left inside Crowell Wood, heading up to Crowellhill Farm
The bridleway after I turned left inside Crowell Wood, heading up to Crowellhill Farm
The lane through Sprig's Alley
The lane through Sprig's Alley
The lane now (Sprigs Holly Lane) through Sprig's Alley - the inconsistency with the apostrophe really bugs me!
The path started rather inauspiciously along a concrete drive to some farm or industrial buildings. It kept to the right of them, continuing between fences with small meadows either side. But the fences ended when they reached a crossing hedgerow, where I suddenly came across a really nice view looking left along a valley - this side of the valley was a large meadow, with some scrub further along, with a wood sloping up the far side of the valley. I momentarily wondered how I'd never come across this charming valley before, but then realised that I had been through it a couple of times, along a bridleway along the valley bottom just inside the edge of the wood (which was Crowell Wood again). The path now went slightly right as it dropped downhill through the meadow to reach the valley bottom and the wood.
The start of the path from Sprigs Holly Lane to Crowell Wood
The path from Sprigs Holly Lane to Crowell Wood
View left from the path from Sprigs Holly Lane to Crowell Wood
Descending to Crowell Wood
View left from the path from Sprigs Holly Lane to Crowell Wood (the yellow flowers are Cowslips)
On entering Crowell Wood and crossing the bridleway, the path turned slightly left as it gently climbed up the other side of the valley (I was nearly misled by a new track that seemed to be under construction here, going slightly right from where I entered the wood). The path soon levelled out as it crossed the top of a wooded ridge, and then started descending quite steeply into the next valley. In the bottom of the valley, I crossed another bridleway and left Crowell Wood, the path going over a stile and heading half-left across a corner of a sheep pasture.
Crowell Wood
Crowell Wood
Crowell Wood
The path now descending through Crowell Wood
The path now descending through Crowell Wood
The path to Hallbottom Farm from Crowell Wood