West Wycombe - Dashwood Mausoleum - Allnutt's Wood - Slough Hill - Lodge Hill - Deanfield - Slough Lane - Chorley Road

15 Nov 2009

• Total distance: 7 miles
• Steps : approx 14,000
• Start point: Public car park near garden centre at West Wycombe: SU 825 947
• Weather: Perfect. Bright but low sun all day, with a few clouds appearing late on.
• Temperature at start: 13C.
• Muddiness rating: * (*=dry, *****=awful) Some flooding on Slough Lane but otherwise easy.
• People passed: Eight.
• Camera: Olympus C5060W (vintage 2004)
• Images taken before deletions = 96, half of them JPGs and half RAWs (which take ages to write on this camera which is unbuffered, meaning you can't do anything while it's writing).

A day earlier four of us had optimistically set off for Hurley on a pre-arranged club walk. The weather was appalling. Typically, the following day was perfect for a walk in the country - almost windless, with a low bright sun which couldn't have been a better light for the heady autumn hues.

I set the controls for West Wycombe, not having been up that way for a year. The car park alongside the garden centre, which claims to enclose the oldest farm shop in the country, was heaving with dozens of "seniors", pulling on their hiking boots and Berghauses (or Berghausen?). They headed off west, and I later learned they'd followed pretty much the route I described four years ago (see WestWycombe), but I went straight up the hill to the Dashwood Mausoleum, walked through St Lawrence's churchyard, and set off along the wide, firm path through Hearnton Wood.

It would have been perfect if my socks and boots hadn't been sodden from the previous day, but I soon forgot about that.

The autumn colours have been particularly vivid this year, and they've held up well into the second part of November. I'm sure it's the result of the wet summer, or maybe the dry one, or possibly the cold, or maybe warm, September which, er, delayed the, er - tell you what, I'll hand you over to the Forestry Commission : "Leaves change colour because the tree's natural food factory shuts down as the days grow shorter and the temperatures drop. Green chlorophyll left in the leaf decomposes allowing other gold and red pigments from sugars and starches to show through." That's just what I was going to say. Anyway, it was wonderful and whatever direction I looked in there was a photo begging to be taken.

After a couple of miles the path descended to Slough Lane, then climbed again up Slough Hill. I was tempted to suggest that the name is less linked to the eponymous metropolis than with the word's meaning, namely "a depression or hollow, usually filled with deep mud or mire, or a stagnant swamp, marsh, bog, or pond, especially as part of a bayou, inlet, or backwater" but as the definitions are all explicit about being below ground level they'd hardly have named a hill after it, so it would have been better for all concerned if I hadn't embarked on this sentence. Okay, move on.

Near the hamlet of Saunderton, half a mile to the east, lies a large factory belonging to Molins plc, who describe their business as "the design, development and manufacture of secondary tobacco processing machinery".

There's a long, flat and potentially uninteresting walk across fields to Lodge Hill, but the angled light slanting down the hill to my left meant I felt the need to take out my camera every few minutes. The number of frames available went down to ten, so I switched over to JPG. I almost never delete files on the camera - the LCD screens are never big or bright enough for me to be confident that I'm giving the shot justice. I check histograms regularly though, and I'll delete an image if there's clipping in an important area, after working out why it happened.

Lodge Hill is more impressive in the approach than in its ascent. The Ridgeway Path goes over the top, but it's heavily wooded and doesn't offer much in the way of views. In any case the sun was getting low so I turned and headed back, pausing only to chat to a pleasant, sprightly gentleman who told me he'd been living there for sixty two years and never regretted it. The setting sun was turning the beeches above us into a flush of ochres and damasks, and I could see his point.

Click here for map > LodgeHillmap

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-- RodBird - 18 Nov 2009