Bovingdon to Chorleywood West

Walked by Sally and Richard, Friday 23rd October 2020

About 7.3 miles (note that recorded route had to be edited and the distance given on the track is wrong), something over 7 miles on the route of the Chiltern Way

For the photographs taken on this leg of the walk click here.

We hadn’t really expected to get out walking in the second half of October, because the birth of our grandson Albert (Bertie) quite rightly took higher priority, and we certainly hadn’t expected to get back to the Chiltern Way. After a spring in lockdown, with walks confined to very close to home, we’d spent most of the summer concentrating on the Nene Way, but we’d finished that route now. We were on leave and in Milton Keynes (I was heading to Wiltshire on Sunday to help out with Bertie as Tom returned to work) and unexpectedly found ourselves – if the weather played along – with two reasonably long autumn days of walking (hopefully complete with autumn colours) before the hour change. Actually, that’s a slight over simplification: I’d arranged a supervisory meeting with a research student this morning. However, in the new normal of working from home, these meetings were taking place remotely, so I decided to push the meaning of “remote”somewhat. At 9.30am I had driven from the flat to Chorleywood and was parked in the car-park on Chorleywood Common opposite the Golf Course (TQ027963) and was participating highly effectively in the meeting on my phone.

Richard arrived around 10.30am and I left the meeting then. Unfortunately we couldn’t leave the car in this car park because of a regulation (presumably to stop people leaving their car for the whole day and catching the train to London) that between 12.30 and 3pm you need a parking ticket (free) in order to avoid a fine, and these tickets are only issued from 11am. So we moved on to St Peter’s Way in Chorleywood West, and found on-street parking without difficulty at TQ016960. We then drove back to Bovingdon together in the other car and parked on Yew Tree Drive (TL017035). It was raining slightly as we set off but it didn’t come to anything and we were soon back on the route of the Chiltern Way, leaving Bovingdon by way of a modern housing estate, but soon leaving the town behind.

We followed a mixture of footpaths and minor roads through undulating countryside, with some attractive autumnal colours in the woodland. On our driving route between Chorleywood and Bovingdon we had passed through Flaunden and seen it to be a pretty village, but the route of the Chiltern Way only grazes the edge of the village which seems a pity. We continued on towards Sarratt; apparently the use of the name for the training school for spies in the “Smiley” novels reflects the fact that John le Carré worked in a department store in nearby Watford as a teenager. We didn’t go into the village, but as we moved from Ordnance Survey Explorer Sheet 182 to Sheet 172, the countryside, which had been pleasant enough, turned glorious.

Just to the north of a little area of woodland on Dawes Common there was conveniently placed bench and we stopped here for lunch. Then we walked through the extremely attractive wood, passing the Old Rectory, with various sculptures in the grounds, including an elephant! We continued across more open countryside to Sarratt Church, which is in the old village with a wonderful location up above the Chess Valley. We then descended to the valley, and crossed the river by way of a narrow little footbridge. Beautiful!

We climbed up the other side of the valley and continued to the next pretty village, on this occasion Chenies where we again went slightly further than necessary for our route-following in order to take a photograph. Then we cut across to the south of the village before turning left, crossing the A404 and heading purposefully for Chorleywood. Our route took us through attractive woodland then through a tunnel under the railway (on which someone had painted a poem; a better style of graffiti!) and out into more attractive woodland – and the sun even came out.

We were however close to the end of the walk, with just a short walk past paddocks (this is definitely a “horsey” neck of the woods) and to emerge at the edge of Chorleywood. This is classic “metroland” which grew up following the coming of the railway. Some of the houses are enormous; the style isn’t particularly to our liking, but the location is glorious. We turned left off the route of the Chiltern Way and left again onto St Peter’s Way and our car.

After collecting the other car we drove back to Milton Keynes on the attractive direct route from Hemel Hempstead through the North Chilterns to Leighton Buzzard.

Following leg