Pete's Walks- Lilley to Barton-le-Clay walk (page 2 of 6)
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.
After a while the path started to drop down towards a gap between Warden Hill and Galley Hill. I kept right at a fork in the path (though with hindsight it might have been nicer to have kept left and then followed an obvious path continuing gently up through the grass and bushes I could see ahead of me). I turned right, uphill, at a path junction, then turned left along a path between another field on my right and the scrub-covered western side of Galley Hill. I passed a wooden kissing-gate (where the other path I just mentioned met my path) and just kept straight on, over the top of Galley Hill. On the far side, the path descended to reach the edge of a golf course.
Looking towards Galley Hill from Warden Hill (I didn't take the path going straight, but perhaps I should have - I turned right and followed a path beside the green field on the right)
The footpath to Galley Hill
Another view towards Luton (this gate is where the green path in the previous-but-one photo joined the path I took beside the field)
View northeast from Galley Hill - the wooded hill in the distance is Telegraph Hill, the Pegson Hills where I'd be later are just the other side of it
The footpath on Galley Hill, starting to descend to the golf course
The footpath on Galley Hill, descending to the golf course
Through a wooden kissing-gate, I went straight on over a fairway (after checking for golfers playing from my right) and past a green on my left, then went a few yards left along a track to a path crossroads. Here I turned right, briefly joining the route of the Icknield Way, with a small wood to my left and a hedge between me and the golf course on my right. I soon reached a bridleway crossroads where I was dismayed to see the same schoolchildren approaching from the opposite direction. I turned left and, I just knew it, almost immediately saw more of the schoolchildren ahead of me. The bridleway ran beside a long hedgerow on the right, with views ahead of me along a valley on the left towards Streatley (which I've been through on the Chiltern Way and other walks). I managed to pass the schoolchildren (they were more or less under the control of a teacher) and I followed the bridleway until it reached a road (another teacher was here, with what looked like packed lunches in the open boot of his car).
Where the path crosses the golf course
The short section of the Icknield Way that I followed, after turning right at the junction by the golf course
The bridleway after I turned left from the Icknield Way, heading north towards Barton-le-Clay
The bridleway after I turned left from the Icknield Way, heading north towards Barton-le-Clay - I had come across the schoolchildren again, there were about a dozen hidden from view in the dip ahead of me
The bridleway after I turned left from the Icknield Way, heading north towards Barton-le-Clay, just before I reached the road
I went left along the road, pleased that the schoolchildren were going the other way although I knew our paths would cross again soon. After just two or three hundred yards I turned right, to continue northwards along another bridleway and again, at least initially, with a hedgerow on my right.
The short road section after I turned left
The bridleway to Barton Hills, after I turned right from the road
The bridleway to Barton Hills