Pete's Walks- Southeast from Watlington Hill (page 1 of 4)
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.
Google map of the walkDownload GPX file of the walk
UPDATE 30/10/2023: You now have to pay (£3 a day, I believe) at Watlington Hill car park, unless you are a National Trust member.
I did this roughly 10.5 mile circular walk on Saturday, 4th September 2021. It was a repeat of a walk I did in November 2013. When I wrote that walk up I said that if I did the walk again I'd probably take a slightly different route (which is shown as Alternative 1 on the Google map) to avoid a short bit of road walking. I chose not to take my own advice today, but might do another time.
For the second walk in a row I had a very late start, setting off from the car park on Watlington Hill (grid reference SU709936) at about 11:10am. From the car park entrance, I turned right and followed the road towards Christmas Common. At the end of the road I turned left for a short distance, before taking a path on the right. This entered a wood, at first along a surfaced drive. The path continued ahead into the wood when the drive turned right, soon turning left and then right. At a path T-junction I turned right, now in an area of beech trees. After one or two hundred yards I kept left when the path forked. There was now a very pleasant section of over a mile, gradually descending through woods.
The road from the Watlington Hill car park to Christmas Common
The start of the path from Christmas Common
The path through Shotridge Wood, approaching the T-junction
The path through Shotridge Wood, just after forking left
Further along the same path
The same path, now in Blackmoor Wood
Further along the same path
Further along the same path
Shortly after passing a statue, and after going straight on where a path went right, the path ended at a drive in the Wormsley estate. Here I turned right for a few yards before taking a path on the other side of the drive. The path crossed a field which seemed to have just two lambs in it, then went over another drive before crossing a larger field (grass, with a strip of maize over to my left - I seem to be seeing maize much more frequently nowadays, though in this case there was maize growing here when I did this walk in 2013). Beyond this field, I turned right along a bridleway heading south through the Wormsley Valley. When this reached a drive, I turned sharp left and took a path across a field to reach Hale Wood. The path continued through this beech wood, then rose across a narrow grass strip to reach Great Wood.
The first field after the first drive on the Wormsley estate
The second field after crossing another drive on the Wormsley estate
The bridleway going south through the Wormsley valley
The path going east to Hale Wood
View left along the Wormsley valley (the white objects are the sight screens at the cricket ground)
Hale Wood
The path continuing from Hale Wood to Great Wood
The path rose steadily uphill through Great Wood, turning right to go up the slope at an angle before turning left to go straight uphill for a few yards before turning left again and levelling out near the top of the hill. After a hundred yards or so, the path turned right to reach the top of the hill, before leaving the wood and crossing a meadow (with a good view to the right). It then ran between gardens and down a driveway to reach a lane in Ibstone, opposite Hell Corner Farm (this rather amused me, as on my last walk I passed Promised Land farm!).
The steep path up through Great Wood
The steep path up through Great Wood
The path up through Great Wood, after it turns left and levels out
The path continuing from Great Wood to the lane at Ibstone
View right, just before reaching Ibstone