Pete's Walks- Great Missenden and Coombe Hill (page 1 of 5)
If you are considering walking this route yourself, please see my disclaimer. You may also like to see these notes about the maps and GPX files.
I did this circular walk of about 12.3 miles on Sunday, 22nd November 2015. It was a repeat of a walk I first did in December 2009, but starting at Great Missenden instead of Coombe Hill. I chose to use this alternative start point because I thought the car park at Coombe Hill might be very muddy and that it might possibly be full (it's been very busy a couple of times I've parked there). Unfortunately the day was cold, overcast and grey throughout, so I'm afraid I recorded a rather gloomy collection of photographs.
I started walking about 10:55am, from the car park at Great Missenden (Grid Reference SP 895016) - this was the first time I'd used this car park, and I was pleased to find that parking was free on Sundays (and Bank Holidays), otherwise I'd have had to pay £3.50 to stay for over four hours. From the car park entrance I went left for about a hundred yards, then took a footpath on the left. This went through a muddy paddock containing three horses to a kissing-gate in the far-left corner (I ignored an earlier kissing-gate on the left). The path continued through a small enclosure, then entered a very large meadow or pasture. There were initially some bushes here as the path approached a gate and a road on my right, but then the path went slightly left and crossed the main part of the field - in places I could glimpse the course of the river Misbourne running through this field, a little to my left. The path then crossed a smaller field to reach the car park of the Black Horse pub at Mobwell.
The small enclosure after the muddy paddock
The large meadow or pasture
The field next to the Black Horse at Mobwell
Across the road from the Black Horse, a footpath passed a large depression on the left, which is apparently the source of the river Misbourne. The path soon went under a railway bridge, beyond which I turned half-right and went through a kissing gate. Two paths continued from here, I took the rightmost one which gradually diverged from the fence on my right as it crossed an empty paddock or pasture. The next field was ploughed, and my boots got very muddy indeed as I followed tractor tracks across it. There was then a short pull uphill (one of only two uphills on this walk) to reach a corner of Coneybank Wood. The path continued beside the wood (on my left) for a while, then entered the wood at a corner of the field (I'd ignored an earlier path going left).
The path starting opposite the Black Horse at Mobwell - the depression on the left is reputedly the source of the River Misbourne, though I've never seen any water here
The path after I went under the railway bridge and went half-right (there is another footpath along the fence)
The path continuing across a muddy ploughed field - my boots seemed to weigh twice as much as normal when I reached the other side
The path continuing past the first part of Coneybank Wood (I went straight on beside the wood here, ignoring the path starting at the gate)
Looking back from about the same point as the previous photo
The path continued through Coneybank Wood for three or four hundred yards, then I turned right onto a bridleway on the far side of the wood. This was soon running between a hedge and a wire fence on my right, with views to the right over the valley I'd be following throughout most of this walk. I kept straight on when another bridleway came in from the right, and soon had a wood on my right. Near its far end I went over a stile on the right to follow a footpath running parallel to the bridleway (the OS map shows the path starting further along, and indeed there is a second stile and footpath sign, but there was definitely a footpath sign here where I joined the path). I followed the path alongside the hedge on my right through two large pastures - there was a large herd of cows in the second one, if I'd seen them from the stile I'd have probably stayed on the bridleway. I went over a stile at the end of this second pasture to rejoin the bridleway (the stile is actually at a five-way junction, I just kept going in the same direction as before) and in a hundred yards or so I reached the hamlet of Cobblers Hill.
The path continuing through Coneybank Wood
The start of the bridleway, on the other side of Coneybank Wood
The bridleway going north to Cobblers Hill
The bridleway going north to Cobblers Hill, just before I left it for the parallel field path
The second of the two fields the path went through - at this point I rather wished I'd stuck to the bridleway, the other side of the hedgerow on the right!
Back on the bridleway, just before Cobblers Hill
Where I crossed the lane in Cobblers Hill