Pete's Walks - Whitchurch Hill, College Wood, Mapledurham (page 5 of 5)
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.
Just after passing Hardwick Hall, I turned right along a bridleway that headed up a track into a wood. The track turned right just inside the wood, which was on a steep chalky slope, then went round a hairpin bend and continued uphill at a fairly gentle gradient. Near the top of the slope the bridleway turned right and then slightly left. At the top of the slope there was a seat on the left, where I stopped and ate my lunch. After leaving the wood, the bridleway soon passed Pathhill Farm on the left, and continued on to reach a corner of a lane, where I turned left.
The start of the bridleway from Hardwick House
The bridleway after turning right, approaching the hairpin bend
The bridleway going round the hairpin bend
The bridleway continuing northwest through the wood
The bridleway continuing northwest through the wood
The bridleway continuing northwest through the wood
The bridleway continuing northwest through the wood
The bridleway continuing past Pathhill Farm
The bridleway continuing from Pathhill Farm
I followed the lane for a quarter of a mile, dropping downhill quite steeply after a while, then I turned right onto a byway (where a wood started on that side). This gradually went back up hill, then I took a footpath an the left. This followed the left edge of a field, then continued along a roughly surfaced track for several hundred yards. Roughly where a fence came in from the right, a waymark on a post on that side indicated where the path went half-left across meadow. At an apparent junction in the meadow I kept right, aiming for the end of a hedge near a large white house. The path then followed the hedge and then a drive, to reach a road in Whitchurch Hill just yards from where I'd parked my car.
The bridleway after I turned right from the lane
The path after I turned left from the bridleway, heading towards Whitchurch Hill, on part of the Chiltern Way
Further along the same path
Further along the same path
View left from the path to Whitchurch Hill
Further along the same path
Approaching Whitchurch Hill, after the path forks left from a farm track
This was another enjoyable walk, despite the route only being concocted to link up a number of paths I'd not walked before with a few paths I'd not walked for some years. It was definitely a walk of two halves, with the first half almost entirely in woods and the second half mainly in fields. It's not a route for people who don't like walking in woods!