Difficulty Moderate
Length 7.2 miles/11.5km
Duration 4 hours
Start/end location Wendover
Map Explorer 181; OS Landranger 165
Step-by-step details and maps ramblers.org.uk/wendover
This may be an eight-mile circuit as rich and varied as any the Chilterns can offer, but be warned; there’s a potentially serious diversion before you even start walking. This is the unexpected Little Italy cafe. Part of Wendover’s old station building, it’s waiting for you as you get off the train with proper coffee, snacks and newspapers. What’s more, it’s open from 5am on weekdays (slightly later on Saturdays) until lunchtime. I mention this because the refreshment opportunities along the route are few, as we shall see.
Not so with well-stocked Wendover, which is reassuring since it is the destination as well as the starting point. It’s one of those villages that used to vaunt itself as a town after receiving its market charter in the 15th century, but which now likes to be called a village again to offset its image as a commuter base.
Out of the station, over the track and the A413, and I was soon rising gently along what is more the foot-worn centre of a field than an entrenched path. If the mud had not still been ridged hard by the ice of the night, I might have struggled. Once into the birches of Cosgrove Wood, I was briefly making common cause with the Icknield Way, so named after the Celtic Iceni tribe once based in what is now East Anglia. This merging with other pre-existing routes happened several times in the course of the day; first here, then a few miles west, when I joined the Ridgeway, and later when I found myself on the newer North Bucks Way, an unashamed confection of the leisure age. A mile after the weirdly remote village of Dunsmore, publess now and becalmed amid National Trust beech and bracken, something unexpected happened. This turned out to be quite in keeping with the area’s history of influential traffic. Down to my right was an enormous house at the end of a long drive. With its mellow brown walls and maze of gables, it sat there like a terrific delicacy in a huge green bowl.
It looked familiar. For years I’d seen stiff famous people shaking hands and posing against its backdrop, a helicopter nearby. Then there was a security camera up on the fence a few yards to my right. Maybe you’ve guessed. This was Chequers, the prime minister’s country retreat. Over a stile and I was in its grounds, crossing the drive and looking down the vista of beeches with which Churchill had it lined.
Before the second and final village, Ellesborough (also publess) – where Margaret Thatcher went to pray during the Falklands war – the landscape made it clear it was not going to be outdone by upstart architects or chancing statesmen. This it did by throwing up the fantastical mound of Beacon Hill, site of Cymbeline’s Castle. This had nothing to do with Shakespeare’s play of the same name, but was the location of the fort from which King Cunobelinus tried to resist the invading Romans. So on to Coombe Hill and the most dramatic viewpoint of all; the northern scarp of the Chilterns and Aylesbury Plain laid out as far as I could see. Ivinghoe Beacon away to the east, Oxford and the Cotswolds to the west. Behind me, as imposing as the location, stood the towering monument to the 148 Buckinghamshire men killed in the second Boer War. This being the high point of the walk, it was downhill all the way, but only geographically, since this patch of acid heathland is a wildlife haven, home to rare heathers, orchids and Chiltern gentian and, in the air above them, red kites – I’m sure I saw one – yellowhammers and firecrests (no luck there).
Back down in Wendover, I carried on straight past the station and into the High Street. Here was a habitat rich in pub life. On the evidence of the exteriors it was a toss-up between the Shoulder Of Mutton and the Red Lion. I went for the second because it felt like a country hotel, but I could easily have gone for the George and Dragon, the Village Gate, the King and Queen, the Packhorse, the Firecrest … this is no village.
Get there
Wendover is served by Chiltern Railways from London Marylebone
