Pete's Walks - The South Bucks Way
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.
Day 3 17/8/05 Chalfont St Peter to Denham (6 miles each way)
Parked at Chalfont St Peter car park (£2.50 for over 4 hour stay)
This was a very hot day again, with the temperature 25 or 26C. From the centre of Chalfont St Peter, the South Bucks Way took a steeply uphill road, over a bridge over the A413, and on upwards, through a very swanky private estate. At the top of the hill it turned right and crossed a paddock with a couple of horses in it. Then the path went round two sides of the next grassy field, before following a path beside a scout camp. It then crossed two holes of a golf course to reach a road. This was followed for a couple of hundred yards, before the South Bucks Way took a bridleway along a green lane which eventually passed through a long tunnel below the M25. The bridleway continued until a crossroads of tracks, where the South Bucks Way turned right onto Shire Lane, a path following the old boundary between Bucks and Herts (I’d walked another stretch of this path near Chorleywood West on the Chiltern Way).
Shire Lane was followed for about a mile until a junction with a lane, where a lengthy bout of road walking began. After a third of a mile, a footpath began alongside the lane, which then passed the end of Denham Aerodrome (where there were many small planes and a few helicopters). The South Bucks Way then turned left into another lane which soon entered the modern residential area of Denham. This was crossed by following a number of roads, until a footpath between fences led under the railway line at Denham station. Another bridleway then led on to the old part of Denham – this was very picturesque and seemed familiar to me, somehow – not sure why, I can’t remember going there before, perhaps I’d seen it on TV or in a film (lots of actors and actresses used to live or stay in Denham because of the studios nearby). A footpath then led across another golf course to reach Denham Country Park, and a final few hundred yards across a field with a few young cows led to a footbridge, and my destination for the day, the Grand Union Canal.
Grand Union canal at Denham 26/10/05
I had a quick look at the canal, and at the nearby lock, drank some more water, put on some more sun cream, and set off back to Chalfont St Peter. It was very warm. I stopped for an early lunch (about 12.30 rather than my normal 1pm) at the Northmoor Hill reserve, opposite the aerodrome, making use of the picnic tables there. It was nice and shaded, pity about the sound of helicopter engines from across the road! I then had a leisurely hour's walk left in the afternoon. As I walked back along Shire Lane I was pleasantly surprised to hear the distinctive call of a Red Kite, just within the M25. I got back to my car in Chalfont St Peter about 2pm, and so finished my trip along the South Bucks Way.
Total distance: 23 miles each way