About my walk
I first walked the Chiltern Heritage Trail in September 2006, but this journal is for when I walked it again in Autumn 2017, when I followed the slightly modified route in the new guidebook published by the Chiltern Society. As with most of the Long-distance paths I have walked, I did it ‘both ways’, each day walking 6-8 miles along the route, then turning round and following the same route back to my car. I thus walked a total of 104 miles, and enjoyed the scenery in both directions. This journal follows my progress in the clockwise direction round the route (the direction followed in the guidebook), but I have also written a journal covering the route in the anti-clockwise direction. It took me seven days to do the walk, spread between September and November 2017 - there was a gap of a few weeks in the middle caused by a temporary closure of a number of rights of way near Little Missenden (some overhead power lines were being worked on). I followed the example of the guide book by starting and finishing in Chesham. I found the directions to be generally very clear and the route was generally well waymarked, so I very seldom had to look at the maps (in 2006 I noticed a strange absence of waymarks near Seer Green, and this time there were a couple of points in or near there where additional waymarks would have been helpful).
The start of the path from Tyler's Hill to Chesham (Day 7)
All the mileages I give for the seven walks are fairly rough estimates, based on the figures given in the original guidebook and on the measurements from the Google maps I produced for each walk. My seven walks started and finished in the same places as when I followed the original route in 2006, except that on Day 6 I walked maybe a third of a mile further to finish where the Chiltern Heritage Trail leaves the road through Chesham Vale, and so Day 7 was correspondingly shortened.
Click here to see a very rough map of the Chiltern Heritage Trail (but only if you have already read my disclaimer and notes regarding maps).