Stonor – Turville Heath – Northend - Turville

26 Feb 2007

• Total distance: eight miles
• Start point: On the roadside opposite Stonor Park gates, SU 737886.
• Weather: Initially overcast, bright sun later but windy and hence much colder than the temperature warranted. Gloves would have been a capital idea.
• Temperature at start: 11C.
• Muddiness rating: * (*=dry, *****=awful) Paths would have been dreadful so I stuck to roads most of the way.
• People passed: Just Rod and Barbara, a pleasant couple from Maidenhead taking the sun at Turville.
• Step counter: 19125
• Camera: Sony Alpha 100, images before deletions = 63.

It had rained more or less incessantly throughout February, apart from one notable exception – a gorgeous day when I contrived to be in the right place (Ewelme), with my camera and fully-charged battery….but without my storage card, which was on my desk back in Maidenhead. The forecast was for sunshine, but I knew the footpaths would be muddy and the bridleways even worse, so I thought I’d stay on the roads. The narrow lanes in this area are rarely busy.

Or so I thought. The previous evening the Top Gear programme had run a typically contrived feature in which Mssrs Clarkson, May and Hammond had burnt up a sizable part of our licence fee by racing tractors around East Anglia. Clearly this had struck a chord with the farm workers of the upper Hambleden valley, as I’d barely emerged from my car before several huge machines went flying past.

As usual, red kites floated in the air above me as I walked along the bottom wall of Stonor Park. Kites are getting more comfortable with humans, and are increasingly prepared to get close to us. I was mulling this over when I heard a squawk overhead and turning round glimpsed the denouement of what I can now identify as an example of ‘kleptoparasitism’. A kite had evidently just dealt a crow a smarting blow causing the latter to drop whatever it was carrying, which was then snaffled, or possibly kleptosnaffled, in mid air by the kite, which made off with it. Never seen that before. No wonder other birds don’t like kites much.

Until the 18th Century kites (Milvus milvus) were widespread in Britain and well-known for their scavenging habit. Hamlet even took time off from inventing the cigar to let us know that:

   I am pigeon-livered, and lack gall
   To make oppression bitter, or ere this
   I should have fatted all the region's kites
   With this slave's offal.

Or was he talking about pigeons? My E in GCSE English didn’t cover it. The Village with Three Corners didn’t even mention kites.

The sun made a few fleeting interjections, and I spent an hour rambling slowly up the winding lane, photographing the reddening, soon-to-bud beeches and enjoying the bucolic tranquillity, disturbed only by the need to throw myself into the hedge every ten minutes as The Stig came thundering past in yet another monster eight-wheeler.

At the top of the hill lies Turville Heath, where there’s a distinctive avenue of limes. The trees are tilia cordata (small-leaved limes), a fairly rare variety, and I recall at one time there being a plaque amongst them giving some of the avenue’s history (I vaguely remember a Welsh connection), though I couldn’t find it on this occasion. A history of the County of Buckingham from 1925 claims the inhabitants of Turville Heath “find their principal occupation in turning chair legs” but the Audi and Volvo estates parked in their driveways suggest that’s probably not the case any longer.

The noticeboard in the local bus shelter is, if I’m not mistaken, a previously-undiscovered Jackson Pollock original. A local walked past, hesitatingly looking in as I photographed it. I was relieved she didn’t ask me what I was up to as I’m not sure she’d have accepted my explanation. Anyway, I think it’s great – and I found “George was here 30/7/74” oddly reassuring amongst the Laurens and Krisses of /06.

Another mile on I reached Northend and turned sharp right along Holloway Lane, which heads gently downhill to Turville (without a Heath this time). On the map the lane looks like two straight and boring miles, but in fact it’s tracked by a footpath through the adjoining woods along most of its length, and there’s a wonderful, constantly unrolling view to the east across a succession of undulating beech woods on the hill slopes below Ibstone.

Turville was quieter than it would have been on a weekend day (it was Monday). The church and churchyard, bordered by pretty flint cottages and overseen by the windmill high on the hill behind, were a perfect postcard, but after a brief chat to a couple from Maidenhead who were enjoying the sunshine I set off again south, first across some muddy fields, and then along a stony track through Poynatts Wood and Kimble Wood, to Southend.

The path down through Stonor Estate is one I’ve taken dozens of times, but I still marvel at the scenic gems freely available to us in this populous part of the country – and at the few people I see when I’m out enjoying them.

Definitive article on red kites by Elfyn Pugh> http://www.birdsofbritain.co.uk/features/red-kite2.asp

Click here for map > NorthendMap

Choose another walk > TheWalks

-- RodBird - 04 Mar 2007