Cowleaze Wood - Wormsley Park - Portways – Shirburn Wood

20 Aug 2006

• Total distance: a smidgeon over six miles
• Start point: car park at Chiltern Sculpture Park SU 726955
• Weather: overcast, warm, very little wind.
• Temperature at start: 23C.
• Muddiness rating: ** (*=dry, *****=awful) A bit damp in woodland as it had been raining all morning, but nothing serious
• People passed: A man and his son, twice.
• Camera: Olympus C-5060W. Images taken before deletions = 75.

The weather wasn’t promising as far as photography was concerned, but for me the walk and the fresh air are the main things. If now and then I have a day when I don’t even take the camera out of its bag, it doesn't bother me. In fact, observing the countryside without thinking about recording it frees me from the perspectives and formats inherent in the camera, and probably helps open my mind to other possibilities.

That said, I did have the camera with me on this occasion, and I was surprised to see later that I’d taken 75 photos: I doubt if I’d have taken half a dozen if I’d had only a film camera.

Down a quiet wandering lane running past Lower Vicar’s Farm I was confronted by a yapping dog the size of a Coke can. Regular readers may be distressed to learn that I’m not really a dog-lover. In fact I’m not that keen on them, to be honest. In fact if you put the population of the world in a line according to how much they love dogs, you’d have John Noakes at one end and me straining to get away at the other. I was considering how to circumnavigate the wretched thing, preferably (though not necessarily) without hoofing it into an adjoining field, when its owner arrived and rescued me. She turned out to be perfectly nice, and at least spared me the usual Oh-he’s-just-a puppy-and-biting-your-leg-is-his-way-of-saying-he-likes-you line I normally get.

Wormsley Park comprises 2500 acres of the most scenic Chiltern countryside, a lovely if somewhat well-hidden 18th century house, and rather startlingly a full size cricket ground. The estate was bought by Paul Getty in 1986, and rumour has it that his friend Mick Jagger (the popular crooner and leader of “The Rolling Stones” skiffle combo) introduced him to cricket. Previously a fan of baseball, Getty certainly put his money behind his new interest, commissioning a cricket field which is said to be modelled on the Oval and now considered to be one of the most beautiful grounds in the country. Getty and his cricket manager, ex Hampshire captain Colin Ingleby-Mackenzie, succeeded in establishing the ground as a first class venue and hosted many touring sides with well-known stars.

Sadly Paul Getty died in 2003, and Ingleby-Mackenzie in March 2006. The future of the ground as a venue for first-class matches is now uncertain.

There are always red kites here, especially over the wooded hills immediately to the east. The first ones were released in this area when the programme to reintroduce the kite began in 1989, initially with four pairs from Sweden and one from mid Wales where the kite had maintained a tenuous presence. Later pairs were brought from Spain. Even though they came from different areas they were all genetically identical. As anyone who walks in the Chilterns knows the programme has been hugely successful, with the birds now widespread. I’ve seen one over the chippy in Hampden Road. You don’t get much more widespread than that.

But Wormsley’s also one of the few places in the region where you can reliably see kites and buzzards in the same airspace. There are many more buzzards than kites in the UK (over 50,000 breeding pairs compared to just 450 pairs of kites) but the buzzard’s strongholds lie to the north and west. There have been buzzards in the Chilterns at least as long as I’ve lived here (since the mid 1980’s) but their numbers haven’t risen like those of its more colourful cousin. The two species seem to tolerate each other in a keep-yourself-to-yourself sort of way, although there may be unseen contention for food or nesting sites. When you see them together it’s clear that the kite is much bigger, with its wingspan up to 200 cm against the buzzard’s paltry 130 cm.

The bridleway provides an easy walk down to Northend, through one of the prettiest parts of the Chilterns, but I cut off right through pasture, then beech woods, to avoid walking a couple of miles along a road, knowing I’d have to do some of that later anyway.

After ten minutes trying to photograph clumps of whitebeam and spindle berries I gave up. I'm coming to the conclusion that the difficulty I have in getting my camera to focus on close-ups is some sort of ethereal message being beamed down to me – along the lines of a man of your age can’t expect to see much beyond his specs anyway, so get used to it. This seems no more of a fantasy than the bizarre manual focusing procedure explained in the camera’s booklet, so I’m starting a one-man war on Olympus by trying to get the most blurred images I can. I’ve no idea where this’ll end up. Watch this space.

After walking the last mile or so along the road I got back to the car in the Chiltern Sculpture Trail car park. As ever the collection of exhibits did little to stir my emotions, apart from a spontaneous upswell of gratitude to the man who invented the word “naff”, without whose efforts it would be tricky to describe the place.

Click here for map > WormsleyMap

Choose another walk > TheWalks

Click here for some > Red Kite facts

-- RodBird - 28 Aug 2006