Pete's Walks- Christmas Common, Cookley Green, Russell's Water (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.
I did this walk of about 8.2 miles on Friday, 29th December, 2024. It was a repeat of a walk I did in September 2023. Most of this report is 'cut and paste' from the report of that walk.
Entering Christmas Common from the north, I took a road forking left and immediately parked on the right (Grid Reference SU 714933). I started walking about 10.45am, going the few yards back to the junction, turning right (there was a footpath of sorts on the far side of the road), and the turning left and following the road about a quarter of a mile to the car park on Watlington Hill (on the left). I walked through the car park and took the path starting by a notice board and the pay-by-phone machine (I think parking is £3 a day but free to National Trust members). The path led through a small wood and crossed a drive, then ran between bushes either side. It turned a bend to the right to reach a gate, where a lovely view opened up over the Oxfordshire Plain. Through the gate I continued along the path over the long flat top of the hill.
The road from Christmas Common to Watlington Hill (the car park is roughly where the road goes out of shot)
The path from the car park on Watlington Hill
The path continuing along the top of Watlington Hill
The path on Watlington Hill
When I reached the end of the hill and the path started to drop downhill, I almost immediately turned half-left and followed a very vague path, aiming just right of a Silver Birch tree I remembered from when I've been this way before. From that tree and a nearby bench I kept left at a fork and the path become slightly clearer as it went downhill at an angle to the slope. This path took me down to an obvious and level path going across the hillside, where I turned left. Soon this was running along a wide grass strip with bushes and dark Yew trees running across the hillside just uphill to my left, with more bushes a little way down the slope on my right. At the end of the grass strip, the path continued through more Yew trees to come to a T-junction with a footpath coming down from the top of Watlington Hill (it starts beside the car park).
Looking north from Watlington Hill, past the foot of Pyrton Hill to Shirburn Hill
Watlington from Watlington Hill
View half-left from Watlington Hill - the path I took down the hill is immediately right of this shot, passing the Silver Birch tree
The path descending Watlington Hill (I took the left fork here)
The path on Watlington Hill
The path on Watlington Hill
Watlington Hill, where the path goes through an area of Yew trees
I turned right, and followed the path for several hundred yards with thick hedges either side until I reached a drive, where I went a very short distance right to reach a road. Here I turned left and followed the road (it was heading from Watlington towards Nettlebed), there being a reasonable verge to walk on.
The footpath from the bottom of Watlington Hill
The footpath from the bottom of Watlington Hill
The short road walk