Pete's Walks - Pitstone Hill, Dagnall, Ashridge (page 3 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.
Instead of going through the gate to the road, I turned very sharply left, and took a path across a paddock. The path continued across a pasture containing some sheep and one or two large white cows. After a while the path had a fence on my right. Beyond this pasture the path crossed a paddock (containing two horses) to reach Little Gaddesden church.
The path to Little Gaddesden church
The path to Little Gaddesden church
Little Gaddesden church
I continued along a drive past the church, on my left, and when the drive turned left beyond the churchyard I went straight on along a path across a meadow - there was a very nice view, looking back left, towards the start of what becomes the Gade valley with a bit of the Vale of Aylesbury beyond. The path then ran for several hundred yards beside a stubble field, following a hedgerow on my left. At a path junction, close to a solitary tree in the corner of the field, I went straight on, going through some smoke from a bonfires as I passed a paddock on my right to reach a private road in Hudnall. I turned right and followed it to reach a crossroads, where I went straight on along St Margarets Lane (or at least that's what the far end of it is called). After a while this turned slightly left, and then I had a large grassy part of Hudnall Common on my left.
View left from just past Little Gaddesden church
The path from Little Gaddesden church to Hudnall
The path from Little Gaddesden church to Hudnall
The path from Little Gaddesden church to Hudnall
The private road in Hudnall
St Margaret's Lane (at least that's what the other end of it is called!)
I then took a bridleway on the right, which passed through a small wooded section of Hudnall Common where I stopped briefly to sit on a fallen tree to eat my packed lunch. I saw both a group of Fallow Deer and a Muntjac Deer as I sat peacefully munching on my sandwiches (Cranberry and Brie, delicious!). I then resumed my walk along the bridleway, which soon left the wood and continued between a hedge on my right and the fence of a large paddock on my left. In the bottom of a small valley the bridleway turned left for a short distance, before turning right along a track to reach a stableyard. Here arrows and waymarks pointed the way to a gate, beyond which the bridleway went down a short path and across a courtyard to reach the road through Little Gaddesden.
The bridleway after I turned right on Hudnall Common
The bridleway continuing towards the stables at Little Gaddesden
The bridleway continuing towards the stables at Little Gaddesden