Hambleton to Southend and return via Shakespeare's Way

We'd "discovered" the Chilterns on earlier walks on the Icknield Way Path, the Ridgeway and the John Bunyan Trail, and had thoroughly enjoyed all our walks on the Chiltern Way. However, even by those high standards, today's walk, on a rare mid-week day off, was exceptional, with chocolate-box villages (the photograph shows Turville) and amazing countryside . It's possible that I was easily impressed after the frustrations of the latest lockdown and a period of rather cold weather, but it really was a glorious walk, on a glorious spring day. There were occasional ascents and descents, some quite steep, and we went the wrong way in one of the woods and so ended up looping around on ourselves, but neither of those things was a problem. Although we have walked regularly throughout the Pandemic, our lockdown walks have been somewhat shorter than those we do when walking a long distance path - and Norfolk is rather flat , so it was good to be back to the hills. Meanwhile, going around in circles just meant we got to spend longer in a beautiful bluebell wood.

There was a very obvious circuit available to us, anti-clockwise on the route shown on the map from Hambleden to Skirmett, Fingest, Turville and Southend, then back to Hambleden on Shakespeare's Way. For this reason, we travelled together in one car, which was nice, and parked back in the car park (SU785856) by the Stag and Huntsman in Hambleden, where we had parked when we walked the previous leg last Saturday. We had again left Milton Keynes early and despite having travelled through the rush hour, which slowed us down slightly around Aylesbury, we had parked and paid our £4 for the privilege in time to set off on the walk around 8.45. We walked back to the Church and followed a lane between the Church and Church Cottage which led to Hamble Brook.

We followed the lane out of the village and just before a little bridge back over the river we took a footpath back to the eastern side of the valley. We continued to walk along the valley bottom, essentially all the way to Skirmett. We were initially close to the road between Hambleden and the hamlet of Pheasant's Hill, later passing through a field of sheep and lambs, reminding us (as on the previous leg) of the pleasures of springtime in the countryside which we missed last year and had come close to missing this year. We became aware of a white building on a hillside in the distance in front of us and eventually realised that this is the windmill up above Turville, which we would be passing close to later and which I later discovered is the Cobstone Windmill. It's unusual to see a windmill on a hill, or perhaps I just associate windmills with the flatter landscape of East Anglia.

In Skirmett the path brought us almost but not quite to the road on which we had driven through the village on our way to Hembleden this morning, but we turned right, away from the road, and took a route around the back of the village and then back towards the road. Again, we turned right before the road and this time we climbed, with lovely views quickly opening up behind us. We crossed a field and emerged into a track...and continued to climb. We passed a memorial to the craftsmen and women of the firm of church furniture manufacturers and carvers, West and Collier Ltd., and entered Adam's Wood, continuing to climb. Richard photographed the primroses and then we noticed lovely blue areas of bluebells. Where possible we followed the Chiltern Way signs and the white arrows and letters "C.W." painted on the trees. We took a sharp left-hand turn and the bluebells got better and better - and we only passed one other person. How amazing to have such a beautiful place to ourselves. We began to descend towards Fingest. Then Richard noticed a familiar clump of primroses and commented that Fingest looked very like Skirmett. Yes, we had managed to loop around ourselves and we were now heading down the hill we had climbed up when entering the wood. We turned around and retraced our steps, this time turning right instead of sharp left.

Now on the correct route, we passed more bluebells, though I think the best ones were in the section immediately after the original left-hand turn, which may or may not be on the correct route of the Chiltern Way. We emerged from woodland briefly before entering Fingest Wood, and as we left this there were absolutely stunning views down to the village of Fingest and straight ahead to the Cobstone Windmill. We descended to the village, which is pretty when you're in it too, and walked along the road we had driven along, passing the unusual St Bartholemew's Church, with its massive Norman double-gabled tower. We turned off the road and onto a narrow path which led, initially through woodland, towards Turville.

We knew that the windmill was up above us on the hill, but we thought we might not get to see it from here because of the woodland. However, we emerged from the trees before reaching the village and had a good view up to Cobstone Windmill. Apparently there has been a mill here since the 16th Century, with the current smock mill dating back to 1816. And it transpires that the mill is something of a star of film and television, having featured in "Chitty Chitty Bang Bang", "Goodnight Mister Tom" and various episodes of Midsomer Murders.

We were soon in Turville, an exceptionally pretty village. What we didn't realise at the time was that this is where the Vicar of Dibley was filmed. Re-watching the television programmes now, it is very clearly Turville. It's a delightful and very funny series and so nice to be able to 'place' it; they just don't make make television programmes like they used to! On the walk, we left Turville on a track which climbed across open countryside, with good views back - to the windmill again. We crossed a road and continued to climb, through woodland. The ground levelled off and we passed Southend Farm, then continued to Southend Common. It was still a little early, but we stopped here for our lunch, noting that we should be able to park here when we return to walk the next leg.

We turned left onto a road for a short distance then parted company with the Chiltern Way, which took a path by a cottage on the right; we turned left, onto Shakespeare's Way. We'd wondered what Shakespeare was doing here as we couldn't think of a link, but apparently the route runs "twixt Stratford-upon-Avon and The Globe", perhaps following a route that Shakespeare himself would have used. We followed Shakespeare's Way all the way back to Hambleden; it was not quite such a stunning walk as this morning's, but still very enjoyable, and we must have done more climbing this morning than I'd realised, because we were mostly heading downhill. The route finding in Great Wood, was slightly challenging but it didn't cause us any real problems. Eventually we descended to the road to the north of Hambleden, and we cut across to Hamble Brook, an attractive stream. Here as elsewhere in the valley, there was surface water lying. Given the recent dry weather, I don't think it can be from flooding, so I think this must come from springs, some of which are shown on the OS map.