Cookham - Beeches Way - Hedsor - Wooburn - Bourne End

18 Nov 2006

• Total distance: seven miles
• Start point: Car park on Cookham Moor, SU 895854.
• Weather: Wonderful. Blue sky and bright sun throughout.
• Temperature at start: 12C.
• Muddiness rating: **** (*=dry, *****=awful) The previous day was very wet so there was mud everywhere, though I've known far worse.
• People passed: No-one in Hedsor valley, but too many to count after that.
• Step counter: 12828
• Camera: Olympus C-5060W. Images taken before deletions = 134.

Oh, I’ve seen some good stuff all right. Dappled evening sunlight on the Piazza della Cisterna in San Gimignano, elephants crossing the dusty plains of the Rift Valley, pure white coral beaches on the northern coast of Skye, dhows plying Dubai Creek at dawn….

- but the most beautiful sight I’ve ever seen was at 08.10 last Friday at Junction 11 of the M4. Massive rain clouds were howling eastwards in preparation for what the weather forecasters had warned would be a day of exceptional downpours. Cars had their headlights on, and those coming from the west had their wipers going flat out. I passed a sign “Gotterdammerung 2, Swindon 46” and braced myself for the worst.

That's when the sun came out.

For about twenty seconds a spell of piercingly bright low sunshine lit the lemon and damask trees along the embankments, the intense colours of the beeches and rowans picked out perfectly against the evil purple-black cumulus clouds behind them. Then, in an instant, the light snapped off and hail crackled against the windscreen.

Obviously I couldn’t get any snaps, but the following day I was itching to get into the countryside, and after attending to a few chores I slid into the last available space in the car park on Cookham Moor shortly before 11 am. The day was exceptionally clear and bright, and it was no surprise that lots of folk were out making the most of it.

The Beeches Way starts about 100 meters north of Cookham bridge and begins its 16-mile course to West Drayton by heading northeast alongside Hedsor Water, one of three natural and one man-made branches followed by the Thames immediately downstream of the bridge. Hedsor Water was the branch used for navigation until 1830, when a lock cut was constructed. This ended the considerable commercial significance of Hedsor Wharf, and it is now an extensive house, apparently being made even more extensive by the look of the heavy plant and construction materials around its perimeter.

The path crosses a main road and follows a track along a beautiful and surprisingly quiet valley, with impressive buildings high up on both sides. Hedsor House and Hedsor Priory lie in woods on the southern side, but the most prominent building is the one high on the northern side. With one square and one rounded tower it has the look of a folly, but even the large-scale OS Explorer map doesn’t put a name to it. The hill’s called Tower Hill, if that’s any help. If you live there, give me a call. I climbed a footpath up the other side of the valley to take a closer look at the little parish church of St Nicholas. Unusually its churchyard has no upright memorials, the graves being marked instead by flat stones. The trees towering over the church provide a host for hundreds of mistletoe plants.

If our part of the planet has a special time of year it’s November, before the leaves fall. Woolman’s Wood, half a mile further on Farm Wood, and finally Wash Hill Woods were all a riot of reds and yellows, and the playing fields in Wooburn Park were dotted with especially colourful specimens.

Wooburn lies astride the River Wye. Not the one that bubbles up in Mid Wales and runs through the Forest of Dean, but the rather more modest “bourne”, or stream, from which Bourne End is named. At one time it had been corrupted to the less elegant Bone End, but the vicar of Wooburn campaigned to have it corrected and was successful in 1858. It’s one of relatively few streams in the chalky Chilterns area, and despite its modest flow it heroically supported at least four mills at one time. The last one closed in the eighties.

I decided to use up the remaining daylight by walking up the hill opposite, which I call Wooburn Hill though it’s probably known differently by locals. I crossed the old railway, which Isambard Kingdom Brunel built as part of the Maidenhead – Wycombe line in 1854. Like many other branch lines it was closed by Dr Beeching in the 60’s. There’s a campaign to reopen it, according to this week’s Advertiser. I hope it’s successful.

A middle-aged lady out walking her dog stopped to exchange pleasantries about the beautiful weather and colours. Our conversation was interrupted by her mobile phone launching into a deafening barrage of what I immediately identified as post-indie techno thrash goth & bass. Being well wrapped up she couldn’t find the phone until about track three, and then couldn’t work out which button to press to turn it off. We both looked around in panic for a twelve year old who could step in and take control. I get in the same state with my camera every now and then.

I crossed the Thames by the combined footpath/railway bridge at Bourne End and strolled back to Cookham along the Thames Path. By now the sun was low and everything was bathed in a warm red light, yet the photos I took don’t really show how it was at the time. That’s probably due to my leaving the camera on “Auto White Balance”. The camera doesn’t know what I’m pointing it at, so when it sees a lot of warm tones it probably assumes my subject is under tungsten lighting and compensates accordingly. D’oh!

Hedsor history:

http://www.british-history.ac.uk/report.asp?compid=42528

Click here for map > HedsorMap

Choose another walk > TheWalks

-- RodBird - 29 Nov 2006