Hambleden – Pheasant’s Hill – Rockwell End – Rotten Row – Mill End

25 Feb 2006

• Total distance: just over 8 miles.
• Start point: Public car park between Mill End and Hambleden, SU 785855. It’s big, but busy at summer weekends.
• Weather: Duck-egg blue sky, cold wind.
• Temperature at start: 4C.
• Muddiness rating: ** (*=dry, *****=awful)
• People passed: Seven and a dog.
• Step counter: 18,472 including several diversions and trackbacks in the cause of photography.
• Camera: Olympus C-5060W. Images taken before deletions = 146.

Apart from an increase in traffic there has been no noticeable change to the Hambleden valley since I first walked round the area in the 1980s. It’s a beautiful valley of picturesque villages and unspoiled buildings, framed by beech-covered hills along the three miles of its length, the Thames in the south and Fingest in the north, where three narrower valleys come together.

Watercourses are relatively rare in the Chilterns but until recently Hambleden Brook was often, albeit unpredictably, a full and bubbling chalk stream. In recent years its flow has diminished and today, when it should be at its peak winter flow, it contained no discernable flow, just a few muddy pools. Like most Chiltern streams its supply seems to have been drying up over the past twenty years. The exception is the Chess, which rises near Chesham and seems to be fed from a more reliable source.

Instead of following the well-trodden path along the brook to the village I set off east on the narrow road to Chalkpit Wood, hoping to capitalise on the low light and sparse foliage which I anticipated would show the lane through the beech-covered hillside to its best advantage. The scene was promising, sure enough, but it had bright highlights and deep shadows. Left to their own devices, today’s compact digital cameras don’t do us any favours in coping with high contrast, and I had to keep a close eye on the histograms to make sure I didn’t lose any details. Maybe using RAW would help – I still haven’t tried it.

I cut off left along the footpath towards the village. The path passes an old wooden barn that looks familiar. That’s because deep in the CACC constitution there’s a rule than says that every photographic landscape competition must contain at least one photo of it. I grabbed a couple of dozen shots, which’ll keep me going for a few years.

I passed Hambleden Manor on my right, where Lord Cardigan, who led the Charge of the Light Brigade, was born. By now the sun was warm on my back. The side of the path was carpeted by snowdrops, interspersed here and there by patches of yellow winter aconites. A bee nuzzled happily around amongst them, perhaps forgetting that it was still February.

Hambleden village is a special place. Visually, it’s outstanding, built almost entirely from brick and flint and jealously preserved. Some years ago it was all owned by WH Smith (yes, that one) and the Hambleden Estate is now in the hands of his grandson, the Honourable William Henry Smith, who clearly isn’t the sort of chap who’ll readily let you slap up a UPVC conservatory or satellite dish. The place has been used for many feature films such as Chitty Chitty Bang Bang, 101 Dalmatians, Sleepy Hollow and the New Avengers, and for major TV productions such as Band of Brothers, A Village Affair, Poirot, Rosemary & Thyme and Down to Earth. Obviously I haven’t seen any of those, though I think I caught a glimpse of the post office in Mad Max 2.

In the centre of the village is the large and imposing cruciform church of St Mary the Virgin, built in the 12th century. The tower holds eight bells, of which the oldest is reputed to be one of the few pre-Reformation bells still in use, first rung at about the time of the Battle of Agincourt (1415). In the churchyard is a mausoleum erected by Clayton Kenrick in memory of his father George Grammer Kenrick and mother Elizabeth “who died at Valparaiso” which, as the warm spring sun emphasised the bucolic loveliness of the place, struck me as unaccountably sad.

Overhead there was a constant air display of wheeling red kites. The kite’s status has declined from one rare enough to write home about, to something we see and think “oh I’ll clone it out later”. I’m happy to be the person who faces into the taboo and takes the inescapable next step. Soup. Admittedly public sensitivity might mean it’s a year or two before the Weekend Telegraph food section leads with a recipe starting Pluck and Joint Six Red Kites - but it’ll happen. If you’ve already tried it, let me know how many bayleaves it needs.

After a mile, at the hamlet of Pheasants Hill, I left the road and scrarnbled onto a path heading diagonally up the side of the valley, though woods of ash and beech, interspersed with patches of yew. Towards the top of the rise, the path passes through an area called Danger Grove. I’ve tried searching the internet for some explanation to it but all I’ve found are some impenetrable and unrelated blogs, mostly by American Scientologists.

From the crossroads at a place called Pheasants, I turned south along the quiet road, heading to Rotten Row. In the main these hamlets aren't much more than a single farmhouse with outbuildings, but I like their quaint names, if only because they’ll probably disappear as soon as an estate agent is instructed to sell them. You can just imagine Sebastian from Prestige Country Placements guffing on about how he could command a premium price in The Field if only he could advertise it as Kings Glebe instead of Danger Grove etc. Pah. Give me Rotten Row or Fawley Bottom any day.

I came upon a field full of happy red clucking chickens, running about like, well, headless chickens in the sunshine. I wondered how long they’d be allowed to do so, given the previous day’s headlines about bird flu spreading to northern Europe.

The road would have taken me back to the car though Chalkpit Wood, but I’d set my heart on taking some snaps with my film camera on the hillside above Mill End. So I took the path through Killdown Bank, jinked right just before it reached the A4155, and followed the brow of the hill round and back into the Hambleden valley. It was a good decision. The evening sun was precisely where I’d hoped it would be, and the last mile took me an hour. Every time I thought the light had passed its best, and I'd packed my kit away, it got even better and out came the cameras again.

Click here for map > HambledenMap

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-- RodBird - 12 Mar 2006