Chiltern Way
The Chiltern Way was established by the Chiltern Society in 2000. The original circular loop is about 134 miles, but a series of later extensions adds a further 90 miles, with the entire route encompassing Buckinghamshire, Bedfordshire, Hertfordshire, Oxfordshire and Berkshire. Thus the Chiltern Way goes around the Chiltern Hills, commonly known as "The Chilterns", a chalk escarpment which runs in a southwest to a northeast diagonal from Goring-on-Thames to Hitchin. The countryside and the walking are varied, with ascents and descents across open downland and through beech woodlands, sometimes carpeted with bluebells. There are picturesque villages a-plenty, several of which feature in well-known television series such as Midsomer Murders and "The Vicar of Dibley", as well as very desirable commuter belt housing, stately homes, and the remains of much earlier hill forts. There is also a section of canal walking, a wander around the edge of Luton Airport, and the horrors of HS2, though fortunately public pressure means that the high-speed trains will mostly pass under the Chilterns in a tunnel.
We had encountered parts of the Chiltern Way before, whilst on other walks including the Icknield Way Path, The Ridgeway, and the John Bunyan Trail, so we were fairly sure we’d enjoy the walk. We started the original loop of the Chiltern Way in May 2019, having chosen it as being accessible from our flat in Simpson, Milton Keynes, whilst also being sufficiently hilly to give us some reasonable practice for our walk along the Cumbria Way, planned for June 2019 (though actually not completed until September 2019). We quickly fell in love with the Chiltern Way, and it will be forever in our memory as a place where we could get out on serious walks whenever we were able to escape the realities of life during the dreadful Coronavirus Pandemic. The repeated travel restrictions meant that progress had a stop-start element to it. It took us nearly two years to complete the original circuit (also allowing for other commitments including the birth of our grandson Bertie) but an advantage of the delays is that we have seen the route in all seasons; we have walked somewhere on the Chiltern Way in every month of the year apart from March! I’ll remember the bluebells, the bright green new growth, and the autumn “mists and mellow fruitfulness”, but also slithering down icy and muddy slopes.
The fact that the route is circular means you can start anywhere. We'd always hoped to walk as much of the path as possible in a series of day walks from our flat in Simpson, Milton Keynes and this led us to start in Stokenchurch, which Google maps gives as a 1 hour 1 minute (34 mile drive) from the flat, about the distance we usually consider to be reasonable to take two cars). Stokenchurch is also right next to the M40, making it a suitably noteworthy starting point. We had intended to complete the further sections of the walk by making use of occasional overnight stops, but this became a less practical and less attractive option because of the Pandemic, so we decided to drive in two cars rather further than we would usually do.
When we started walking the Chiltern Way we had only intended to complete the original circuit, but in autumn 2019 and winter 2019/20, we did a number of shorter walks on the 27-mile northern extension, which is closer to both Milton Keynes and Norfolk, and when the first Coronavirus lockdown eased in May 2020 this was the first place to which we returned. In order to walk the 28-mile Berkshire Loop and the 31-mile southern extension (in Oxfordshire) we will need to stay overnight and we have no immediate plans to do so. The rest of the walk has been so lovely that it would seem a shame to omit these extensions, but yet I am slightly worried that they might not be so nice (they undoubtedly go through some rather busy places) and so our memories of this very special route might be tainted.
We now have a subscription to the Ordnance Survey maps app; this is useful as it enables you to see exactly where you are and it gives me a lot of pleasure. However (apart from the occasion when we forgot them!) we wouldn’t set out without paper OS maps, partly because we enjoy looking at the route in the context of the wider landscape and partly because phones need a mobile signal so are inherently unreliable for map reading. The route of the Chiltern Way is covered by OS Explorer sheets 171, 172, 181, 182, 192 and 193. We also used Nick Moon’s guide “The Chiltern Way and Chiltern Way Extensions” and the Chiltern Society’s website includes interesting information as well as important updates. The signposting on the ground is generally good, though the (otherwise helpful) white arrows painted on trees in woodland can be confusing, especially given the huge density of different footpaths in the area.
