With some of the most picturesque countryside in England, yet only a short hop from London, the Chiltern Hills are just waiting to be explored. The glorious views from high ridges, ancient woodlands brimming with wildlife and downs alive with wild flowers and butterflies make the Chilterns and the communities within them English to the core. The vast network of well-established paths provides a wonderful walking country with history and nature keeping you company at every step. If you are planning to get away from it all in the Chilterns, this collection of 40 moderate walks is your perfect guide.
This guidebook to Walking in the Chilterns offers 35 of the best walks in the Chilterns Area of Outstanding Natural Beauty. The Chiltern Hills is a peaceful walking destination of chalk hills and ancient woodlands within easy reach of London. The walks in this guidebook range from 4 to 12 miles and are suitable for most walkers. The walks take you on a journey through this classic Chiltern landscape that has been shaped by human activity for thousands of years, visiting interesting historic sites, colourful gardens and picture-postcard villages with thatched cottages, fascinating churches and cosy pubs. Step-by-step route directions include lots of information about all these sites along the way, and are illustrated with clear OS mapping and vibrant photographs. GPX files are available to help with navigation. There is also information on the region's rich geology, history and plantlife, as well as advice on accommodation, transport and refreshments. The Chiltern Hills follow a line of chalk from the River Thames at Goring up to the Barton Hills just west of Hitchin, boasting great views from the north west edge and, on the south east side, a more intimate undulating landscape of rounded hills and valleys, covered in a mix of broadleaved woodland and open farmland. Despite its relative proximity to London, the region abounds in peace and tranquility, making it an idyllic destination for a day's walk in the countryside.
The Chiltern Hills is a historical walking guidebook of eighteen circular walks between seven and ten miles.The Chiltern Hills are an area of hills northwest of London. These walks are confined to a small area north of Henley. Each walk has a map detailed with walk decription and is accompanied by much interesting local history notes. The walks pass through typical picturesque English villages, glorious countrysides with stunning views—England at its best. They pass by local village pubs, old churches, and village ponds. Country lanes, hills, valleys, woods, and streams are a feature in an area that has often been used in well-known films and TV series. Walks can be extended by combining more than one walk, or walks can be intersected at crossover points between walks. Some walks pass through nature reserves; others pass by the grounds of stately homes. The book is for the newcomer to walking as well as the experienced walker.
Join John Rogers as he ventures out into an uncharted London like a redbrick Indiana Jones in search of the lost meaning of our metropolitan existence. Nursing two reluctant knees and a can of Stella, he perambulates through the seasons seeking adventure in our city’s remote and forgotten reaches.
Travel writer and journalist Gail Simmons follows in the footsteps of Robert Louis Stevenson as she walks from High Wycombe in Buckinghamshire to Tring in Hertfordshire via Great Missenden and Wendover, tracing not only the changes in the landscape of the last 150 years but also those yet to come with the imminent arrival of the controversial HS2, the high-speed railway from London to Birmingham. Just as Stevenson spoke to people he met along the way, Simmons encounters those whose lives will be affected by HS2: a tenant farmer, a retired businessman-turned-campaigner, a landscape historian and a conservationist. In the autumn of 1874 a young, unknown travel writer called Robert Louis Stevenson walked from High Wycombe in Buckinghamshire to Tring in Hertfordshire. He wrote up his three-day journey across the Chiltern Hills in an essay titled In the Beechwoods, penned a decade before he found fame as the author of Treasure Island and The Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde. During his walk, Stevenson observed the natural world, reflecting on the experience of walking across this landscape at a time when England was still largely agrarian and when most people still earned their living from working the land. During his walk he was accompanied by a 'carolling of larks' that was so integral to his journey he 'could have baptized it "The Country of Larks" '. Almost 150 years later Simmons walks across the same landscape, observing the loss of flora, fauna and the whole rural way of life, replaced by commuters and dormitory villages, a trend portrayed by John Betjeman in Metro-land (1973), which described suburban life alongside the Metropolitan Railway. Divided into three parts to parallel Stevenson's journey the book offers a detailed, almost forensic, examination of this distinctive landscape of English chalk downland interwoven with recollections from Simmons of growing up in a Chilterns commuter village. 'I might have left long ago' she says, 'but this place still matters to me'.
