Little Marlow - Horton Wood - Winchbottom Lane

23 Jan 04

• Total distance : 3 or 4 miles, dependent on how you feel when you get to Ray Farm.
• Start point : At the southern end of Winchbottom Lane, SU 868881. There's nearly always room on the road to park a car.
• Weather : Bright, little wind. Temperature at start +7C
• Muddiness rating (*=dry, *****=awful) *
• People passed : no pedestrians, but some light traffic in Winchbottom lane.
• Camera : Olympus C-5060W. Images taken before deletions = 52.

This short walk, just over a mile east of Marlow and rarely more than a half mile from the A404(M), appeals to me because it shows what pleasant slivers of countryside there are, lying just out of sight, waiting for us to discover. Also it's where I went the first time I put on walking boots after moving to the Thames Valley from Warwickshire in the early 80's. It can easily be combined with other walks (which I plan to add to this series) to make a longer and more substantial day out.

On the left at the south of Winchbottom Lane is a house identified on the map - though not on its gate - by the strange, sad name "Coronach". The dictionary defines it as "a funereal dirge". I can only surmise that it arises from something that befell its owner, tragic enough to make him or her want to enshrine it in a way that they'd have almost constant reminders. I think I'd have stuck with Dunroamin, on balance.

After a few minutes walk I arrived at an abandoned trailer, which has been lying alongside the lane for about fifteen years. From there footpaths lead both left and right. I took the left one and headed across a rolling field towards Merton's Hole Cottage. This brick cottage was deserted for years, covered in brambles, boarded up and desolate, but has now been renovated. The new owner has planted chestnuts and hawthorns along the footpath, presumably to stop him seeing us, or us him. Either way, enjoy the view over the Thames to Winter Hill, Bourne End, and beyond, before it disappears.

The path emerges onto a narrow, practically unused road which I assume was the predecessor to the A404(M), out of sight but not earshot, down in a cutting beside it. It changes from a metalled surface to dirt track, and then back again. After a few hundred yards I turned into Horton Wood and away from the rumble of the traffic.

The path is well-defined and dry, and the wood itself contains some of the best mature beeches around. It also has drifts of bird cherry, silver birch, and pines, and the estate is obviously managed well but discretely - it's not uncommon to hear a chainsaw in the distance, but the forestry operations aren't intrusive.

When the path joins the road at Ray Farm you can simply turn right and walk along the lane back to the start, or do what I did - turn left for a few yards and then right, following the narrower lane that goes north from Winchbottom Farm. This is tiny and I've never seen anybody on it. If it led to a lovely flint-faced pub with a roaring log fire and Brakspears on draught it would be my all-time favourite walk. In fact it ends in a short litter-strewn byway which joins the busy Heath End Road, so it barely gets into my top twenty. I followed the main road for a few hundred yards (on a broad verge so it wasn't too unpleasant) before turning right into Hillbottom Lane and back towards the car. The view across the little wooded valley, and the red kites circling overhead, could lull you into thinking you were in Mid Wales.

Given that it was a Sunday afternoon, rather too many vehicles went past. A high proportion were 4WD's, driven in the main by account managers and call-centre supervisors who'll doubtless need them to negotiate the mountain road to Slough in the morning.

Click here for map > HortonwoodMap

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- RodBird - 28 Jan 2005