Pete's Walks - Whiteleaf Hill and Little Hampden (page 2 of 3)
The Ridgeway then continued alongside a fence with Maple Wood on my right - to my left I could see across a field to Chequers, with Coombe Hill beyond. Beyond the wood, the path turned left and continued across part of the Chequers estate. I crossed the main drive to the house, and continued straight on to reach a minor road at Buckmoorend.
The Ridgeway, running beside Maple Wood
The Ridgeway, running beside Maple Wood
Chequers, with Coombe Hill behind it
The Ridgeway crossing the grounds of Chequers
The Ridgeway carried on across the road, running now as a bridleway amidst a tree belt. I soon came to a permissive path, which I followed for a couple of hundred yards or so as it ran just to the left of the bridleway. Shortly after I rejoined the bridleway I reached a path crossroads where I turned right, leaving the Ridgeway but joining the route of the South Bucks Way (which starts nearby on Coombe Hill). This bridleway led gradually uphill through Chisley Wood for several hundred yards. After it flattened out, I kept an eye out for where the bridleway forked left from the track it had been following. A blue arrow eventually showed the way, and I then soon reached the end of an old lane (it started at Buckmoorend and presumably it once continued to Little Hampden), where several paths and bridleways met.
The Ridgeway, after crossing the road at Buckmoorend
The permissive path next to the Ridgeway
The bridleway through Chisley Wood, heading towards Little Hampden
The bridleway through Chisley Wood, heading towards Little Hampden
The bridleway through Chisley Wood, heading towards Little Hampden
I continued more or less straight on, southwards towards Little Hampden on a footpath through another wood (I could just as easily have taken a bridleway a little to the right that followed the edge of the wood). At the next junction, after several hundred yards, I turned right (joining that bridleway I just mentioned, which had turned left into the wood), for a few yards and then forked left on a path (if I'd gone straight on at the first junction I'd soon have reached Little Hampden (sadly the Rising Sun pub there has now closed)). The path soon left the wood and ran to the left of a hedgerow in a ploughed field. After a while the path switched to the right of the hedge, and near the bottom of a slight dip it turned left into Widnell Wood. I followed the path through the wood for two or three hundred yards to reach a path junction where I forked left, this path now gradually dropping downhill through the wood.
The start of the footpath going southeast towards Little Hampden
The footpath going southeast towards Little Hampden
The footpath northwest of Little Hampden, heading towards Widnell Wood
The footpath northwest of Little Hampden, heading towards Widnell Wood
The path through Widnell Wood
The path through Widnell Wood
The path through Widnell Wood, after I forked left