Askett and Cadsden to Watlington

Another lovely day of green Chiltern landscapes and red kites. We woke to sunshine - that didn't last all day but neither did we get wet. It was windy, and we put our waterproofs on at one stage, but the rain didn't come to anything. The first half of the day involved a few ascents and descents and it was glorious walking. I enjoyed the second half slightly less - the route from around Chinnor was beneath the ridge and dead straight, so just a little less interesting. I also had knee-ache, though to be fair that may have been as a result of the earlier ascents and descents!

We slept well at Solis Ortu and had a pleasant breakfast. It is typical of the friendliness of Pamela and Philip Crockett that Philip offered us a lift back to the path, though given it was only half a mile or so, we didn't take him up on the offer. We left Solis Ortu around 9am and by 9.20am were back at the point where the Ridgeway climbs behind The Plough at Cadsden.

We climbed quite steeply through Giles Wood, with good views behind us. We reached an ancient long barrow and the views opened up in front of us, down to Princes Risborough and to the flatter land to the north. We turned left along a good path, with dog walkers for company. We reached a wood but noticed a viewpoint a short distance to our right, and went to take a look (lovely). I suspect there are lots of equivalent routes at this point - we followed the official route which was rather overgrown, but it brought us out onto a lovely scrubby hill above Princes Risborough. We had noticed a couple of temporary signs with red kites on them, so we suspected we were going to encounter an event of some sort, and soon groups of walkers started coming towards us. We discovered later that this was the Clare Foundation's Red Kite Ramble, raising money for various charities. We were descending quite steeply - some of the walkers coming towards us were huffing and puffing a bit and they clearly thought we had the easy option. Not with my knees and a rather slippery path!

We reached the outskirts of Princes Risborough and turned onto a grassy track (rejoining the route of the Icknield Way Trail). We turned right onto a road, temporarily leaving The Ridgeway to walk down into Princes Risborough to buy provisions for lunch. We very quickly found an M&S 'Simply Food' and bought ham and egg mayonnaise rolls which (when we ate them a couple of hours later) were delicious. At this stage Princes Risborough seemed a rather ordinary town, but we decided to explore a little more and found a pretty little area around St Mary’s Church and the Manor House. We walked back through the town, amazed by the number of red kites overhead, and compared notes (by phone) with our daughter Helen who, coincidentally, had lunch at The Fat Fox in Watlington (where we are staying tonight) exactly a week ago.

We climbed back to the route of the Ridgeway and turned right, continuing around the edge of the town, though with good views to our left. We turned left onto a pavement alongside the A4010, passing several groups of Red Kite Ramblers (two of whom kindly explained to us that the walk was raising money for various charities and that there was a choice of short, medium and long routes, all starting from the Clare Foundation's headquarters). We crossed the main road and took a minor road, then turned onto a path by Ridgeway Lodge (a B&B we had looked at - it would have been too far from Tring Station after yesterday's journey from home, but it looks a lovely place). We crossed the separate 'up' and 'down' lines of the railway, one in a tunnel beneath our feet and one crossed at a pedestrian crossing. There was a delightful wildflower meadow between the two lines, and as we climbed there were good views back to Loosley Row and Lacey Green.

I particularly enjoyed the tree covered hillsides and pretty countryside in the next section. We climbed up Lodge Hill which seems to be an outlier from the chalk ridge. We turned right at the top, passing a family group then soon after having to stand to one side as a large group of walkers came the other way. I do wish people would say thank you!

We descended and walked through a couple of fields of oilseed rape, then crossed a road and walked across an undulating open area bordered by woodland. We were (again) approaching the route of the Icknield Way Trail and Richard (rightly) thought that there might be a shortage of places to stop for lunch once we were on the track, so we sat down on the grass to eat our lunch, watching two dogwalkers approach us then then turn round and walk away from us again.

A gate brought us onto the route of the Icknield Way Trail, a track firstly through woodland and then bordered by hedges. The map tells me that we were passing between the Warren, the Cop and Wain Hill, with lots of contours in all directions but the walking was quite level. We merged with Swan's Way, and Chinnor came into view to our right. We'd wondered about walking down into Chinnor in the hope of getting a cup of tea. From a distance, the church looked interesting, but the rest of the village didn't look very promising so we decided not to take the chance. We were overtaken by a noisy group of young people.

After crossing the road down to Chinnor, there are (disused?) quarries on both sides of the path, to the extent that the guidebook reminds you that you really are on a 'ridgeway' here – a ridge between the quarries that is. Most of the disused quarries are now full of water, apparently a lovely blue because of the chalk (as we saw off the coast of Dorset last month, because of the rock falls) but there was so much vegetation about, it was difficult to see anything beyond the hedges, security fences and warning signs. I didn't like this section much.

We left the quarries behind and the track became narrower and more attractive. When we could see the views, they were to the lovely wooded ridge on our left and down to the flatter land on our right with, in turn, the Oxfordshire villages of Crowell, Kingston Blount and Aston Rowant visible beneath us. We passed or were overtaken by occasional groups of cyclists and (less frequently) other walkers, and Richard found me a seat-shaped rock in the hedge on which to sit and rest. Later, we sat on the bollards intended to keep motorised vehicles off the track, which was first a bridleway then a restricted byway - I'm not sure I know the difference.

We reached Beacon Hill and the Aston Rowant Nature Reserve, which I remember as a fieldwork site from OU residential school at Reading. Happy memories of students using point quadrats on a transect down the slope towards the M40. No ecology today, so we walked underneath said motorway and continued straight ahead.

There was an attractive wooded area around Shirburn Hill and a mile or so later we reached Watlington Hill Road - unsurprisingly with Watlington Hill to our left and Watlington half a mile away to our right. We left the path and walked to Watlington. Now, you fellow East Anglians, note that this is Watlington, Oxfordshire, not Watlington, West Norfolk. However, the walk down the road was so flat that you could have been forgiven for thinking you were in the fens! Well, apart from the ridge behind you and the red kites overhead.