Via the Horse Sanctuary…

Follow the main walk to the top of page 4 but, after descending the hill (paragraphs 1-2) turn right along the lane (Flowers Bottom Lane) instead of crossing it).

On reaching a small settlement, take a footpath left into a steep field. Veer right, climb to the top and go through gates into the back of the horse sanctuary. Follow the path to the main visitor area and tea room. (You’re on a public footpath, but to explore the centre there’s a £1 entry fee). The sanctuary closes at 4.

After your visit, follow the main entrance drive to a road (Slad Lane). There’s a stile by the gates if shut. Turn left down the lane and at a crossroads with New Road, go straight over, down a quiet, winding lane (Smalldean Lane).

This lane would lead you all the way to the Golden Cross near the station, but, after about a mile, with a redbrick house to your right and farm buildings to your left (Small Dean Farm), turn left down a footpath, eventually turning right into a large field. Turn left at the corner, to follow the hedge alongside the road. Soon, you rejoin the main walk ( point [14] p 6) which you follow to the Golden Cross and station. Knocks about a mile off.

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6 on a sunny day. Quite muddy underfoot but a dry sock day. We reached the Pink and Lily about 1:30 5 ordered gargantuan feasts. And then, readers, they ordered puddings. All this meant that we didn’t leave until 3. Off we trotted and all decided to take the Horse Sanctuary route despite the realisation that there would not be time for a look round. (You would need to leave the pub by 2:30 for a look round. It still served as a shorter route to the station, handy for some who were getting weary. And there were one or two horses to say Hi to. We just made it back in time for the 16:57 No time to stop at the Golden Cross. All enjoyed the walk.

3 turned out on a cool blustery day for this lovely walk. The ground was covered with fallen leaves but there were enough left on the trees to catch the light and create endless compositions of autumn colours throughout the walk. There were some muddy patches which we were able to skirt around but the paths were generally good and firm.

There is no obvious picnic spot on this walk so we went to the Pink and Lily for drinks and took them out to the garden and into a pod where we were able to discreetly eat our sandwiches. The weather felt cooler and windier when we set off again but we soon warmed up on the many uphill stretches which made us wonder if the walk should be graded 5 out of 10 rather than 4. We reached Saunderton just after the 15.57 had departed so went to the pub for tea. Very friendly service. We caught the 16.57 back to London.

2 on a largely sunny day. The bus replacement wasn’t so bad. Only us 2 on it as it rattled along to Little Kimble.

A pleasant walk with no wrong turns. Saw plenty of flowers, some butterflies, and a small deer hiding in the undergrowth. Early on, there was a whole flock of red kites circling low overhead. If they were waiting for me to keel over, they were to be disappointed.

Lunch for one at the Pink and Lily. Cider for the other. Then on. We took the diversion to the Horse sanctuary which worked well but maybe needs a few tweaks. Although the sanctuary only requires a donation of £1, they made at least £3.60 out of me after I’d seen their sad little faces.

We didn’t stop at the tea room there but we did stop at the Golden Cross. More cider, sigh.

We were aiming for the 15:54 but managed to get the delayed 14:54 a few minutes earlier. Thought we’d struck lucky. Then they announced the 15:54 was going fast to London and we were following slow behind. Win some lose some.

In dry weather, just 3 walkers were up for what is one of my favourite short walks. We split at Redland End into 2 going to the Pink & Lily for lunch and 1 walking on to The Black Beauty Tea Room at the Horse Trust in Flowers Bottom, and improvising the route from there.

A long lunch at the Pink followed and we got to The Golden Cross with half an hour to spare before the 16.52 train, for cake/tea/beer (delete as appropriate).

Fine views from the wooded and not wooded ridges, no mud worth speaking off, interesting woods, great vistas down lonely U-shaped valleys, plenty of red kites to ogle at. Always a good walk.

12 today. A cloudy dry day. A brisk pace on a walk tougher than I remember, with stiles and plenty of ups and downs. In places there was this brown sticky stuff on the ground. Someone said it was called ‘mud’. Thankfully, not a lot of it.

There was an unexpected detour in the morning. I hate to use the L word as you know. But we were, briefly. Not my fault of course. I blame the others. I was merely following.

We eventually got to the Pink and Lily, where people were impressed with the quality and presentation of their meals.

After lunch, i fell into bad company and was persuaded to follow three others on an unscheduled shortcut that took us to the Horse Trust’s Sanctuary near Speen. Lots of retired or rescued horses, all with their life stories displayed. And a tea room. This would make a great alternative ending. Scenic too. If only I could remember the route ‘sigh’.

Just 5 off the quiet train for this lovely walk. The Lily & Pink had good service, as did the Golden Lion before the 1657 train home.

Enjoyed a nice walk

Note change of train time - departing Marylebone 10.05

The return train, to clarify, is a choice between a direct stopping service (xx.51) or taking a northbound service to Princes Risborough and changing there for the fast train from Birmingham Moor Street to Marylebone (xx.54)

However, the slower, stopping train @ .51hrs will return you to London 15 minutes earlier than the faster .54 train.

This is due to a 21 minute wait to change to the fast train at Princes Risborough.

18 , maybe more.All dutifully dispersed before they could be counted.Despite torrential rain at dawn, we had sunshine and blue skies throughout the day with one very brief shower after lunch. This is a beautiful walk.The autumn colours were at their best with infinite shades of yellow, gold and brown transforming the woods and colouring the landscape from afar. Most people stopped at the Pink and Lily for lunch, some having a drink outside and one or two ordering food. Service was friendly and efficient and they tolerated some of us eating our sandwiches at some tables in their car park.

Three of us had tea at The Golden Cross and one got some cake to take away. Efficient service and reasonable prices. One group caught the 3.51pm train, others the 4.51. Hopefully everyone finished before dark.

A couple of comments about the walk:

I may have lost some fitness over the last few months, but I would describe this walk as "moderately strenuous in places" rather than "a gentle walk" and would upgrade it to a 5 out of 10.

I would say it's essential to have a compass, in a couple of places. Fortunately, I'd downloaded a compass app the night before.

It was a great walk, though!

I agree about the difficulty rating. A couple of others remarked that it was strenuous too.

10 today. dry start then very light rain getting heavier then fine pm . At lunch, one of our number headed off for Princes Ris fearing more rain. And what happened? The sun came out. We were so smug.

A varied and very pretty walk. Wonderful colours in the beech woods. There were some comments about the directions being vague in places. It could do with a clarity check. Like that corner of the wire fence top of page 6. And a bit I noticed today, approaching Solinger farm. The directions say “follow the bridleway for 700 m ignoring ways off” But at one point there’s a fork. Which fork’s the way off? Eh? Eh?(You take the right fork actually).

The Pink and Lily fine. The Golden Cross fine. But when is this fad for pale ale going to die out? Soon I hope.

14 walkers (4 of those had driven to Saunderton and left their cars there) in dry and warm for the season but greyish weather.

This is one of my favourite short walks, so you won't hear anything negative from me.

Today it was also virtually mud-free and with the benefit of being able to peek through the leafless trees from the wooded ridges into the valleys. Quite a bit of up-and-down en route, but despite that almost all kept together to the lunch pub (bar SWC's most regular backmarker). Upon calling The Pink & Lily, the pub had already given us the dreaded "we're fully booked and don't really fancy 8 lunchers turning up w/o a reservation and further clogging up the orders for the kitchen on a very busy day"-message, but upon arrival there - magically - was a table for 6 and another small one in a snug in the bar, and enough space also for the picknickers to sit around it.

We reached Saunderton just after 4 and - with the 15.50 just gone - most retired to The Golden Cross. All bar the car drivers were then on the 16.50 train.

This walk sounds very interesting and I am keen to do the full 14 miles. I know the weather is light rain but rather windy. Any takers?

Monica

At least three of us will be doing the longer (main) option, whatever the weather....(though let's hope it is not too horrid...)

Great and see yo all at Marylebone train station for 09.15 train. Looking forward for some autumn colours and fungi spotting too.

Monica

The weather looks better in The Chilterns. Two of us intend to do the late start short cut. Anyone else interested?

Hoping to do the shorter option

Karen thanks very much the walk it was a lovely walk and we escape the 'so called storm Brian'. Sorry I had to dash off in the end and caught the 16.53 train with 2 minute to spare.

Thanks for the company guys.

Monica

So after all the hoo-ha about Storm Brian it was a perfectly nice day , mostly only a bit breezy, with stronger gusts just once or twice, good amounts of sun, especially in the morning, one shower near the start - “nothing out of the ordinary for October” as the BBC forecast finally said the night before, after a week of much more apocalyptic warnings that probably put off a lot of walkers for this and other walks today.

Still, 8 turned out for the longer Saunderton start and 6 for the shorter Princes Risborough one, so w=14 in all. Two faster walkers on the Saunderton start soon whizzed off and were lost to history. The rest of us met up with the Princes Risborough group in the Plough Inn and walked together with them in the afternoon.

The longer, combo walk worked very well. Doing the walk directions backwards occasionally led to some minor detours - beechwoods are in any case rather confusing - but we managed well enough, aided by map, gps and fuzzy memories from doing the walk before in the normal direction. It was quite a long morning (for the record we got to the pub at 1.30pm). The Plough is now smart and efficient under Chinese ownership - an omen for the future, perhaps. For those who do not yet know, David Cameron (remember him?) took Chinese President Xi there for a pint. It thus has become a place of pilgrimage for the Chinese (I kid you not), was bought by the a Chinese company, and a complete copy of the place has now been erected in China. The food was very nice and the service cheerful. Perhaps a world dominated by China won’t be so bad after all....

In the afternoon we passed Cameron’s former country estate: some walkers stepped off the path here to be photographed beyond the signs saying that if you step off the path you are breaking the terrorism act or somesuch. Let’s hope they don’t put the pictures on social media or they might be getting a visit from Special Branch.

The beechwoods on this walk were still green at path level but lots of treetops (particularly ash) were bare when seen from above. Enough bits and pieces of other autumn colour to make it interesting. Coombe Hill was cold and windy as it always is. The cakes in Rumseys were as chocolatey as ever and the Shoulder of Mutton was cosy and christmasy. Conoisseurs went to both.

We talked of many things - Brexit, how best to learn Italian, whether it is OK to vote on Strictly when you did not get home in time to watch all the performances... We got a train home at whatever time we did. It was dark anyway.

https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2016/dec/06/chinese-firm-pub-david-cameron-xi-jinping-pint-plough-cadsden

The two fast walkers arrived at the Plough same time as the late risers and had lunch together, then sped off again before the slow party from the early group arrived at the pub.

14

mostly sunny and breezy with Storm Brian

-failing-to-make-an-appearance

getting the later starting train in accordance with swc midweek walks tradition ! anyone else?

8 walkers off the early train in brilliant sunshine , which stayed with us all day. 1 more was met at the lunch pub, she had driven to Saunderton but arrived too late to catch the scheduled train due to the rush hour traffic, so made her way to the pub by foot and bus to pick up the walk there. 1 of us was 'on-call' and unfortunately got that 'call' some time between ordering lunch and getting it. He had to call a taxi to get to work.

As for the walk: a nicely undulating route through very quiet countryside, with a fair mix of varied woods, with the sun breaking through the tops, very pretty indeed.

We arrived at the pub bang on 12 o'clock, so were the first to order food, but it still took an age to arrive. So much so that the 4 who took the later train arrived before we had left. They were helped by their own ingenuity in getting off the Aylesbury train at Monks Risborough and improvising an alternative start for the walk (rather than travelling all the way to Aylesbury and then back to Little Kimble).

The afternoon route had some very pretty valleys and more woods to offer, incl. 1 that was dominated by blue carpets in every direction (not quite at their best yet), before the final prolonged descent to Saunderton. 3 paid a visit to the Golden Cross's sunny back garden for tea & cake and/or beer. The rest went for the 15.50 train. 13

Intend going.

4 of us on this walk (2 catching up later on) drizzle all day . Great lunch at the Pink & Lily, ending with drinks at the Golden Cross. The walk directions held up well vs. last time walked / checked in 2009.

The good news is that the Black Lion re-opened quite a while back summer 2011 - I had assumed that it had gone for good as is so often the case. So a possible v. late lunch stop for this walk or an earlier lunch stop to be re-inserted for CW2 walk 3.

This is a lovely but fairly complex walk. Check out the walk comments for some useful info.

5 on this walk. A brilliantly sunny day with fog at the end in fact, a bit of a fog sandwich. It had lifted by the time we reached Little Kimble but returned again when we descended to Saunderton. If you haven't realised yet, we are having a good autumn. The woods were wonderful. Ablaze with colour caught by the low sunlight. Even more dramatic than Box Hill the day before. I took over 300 photos - a record- (don't worry I wont bore you with ALL of them, maybe just the best 100) There were some tricky bits, not helped by the leaf fall obscuring paths. A stretch I've previously crossed without problem sent me round in a circle! And there were a few of those moments when you feel you can't possibly still be on the right path but it turns out you are. And there was occasional mud. The Pink and Lily was fine but I think we was all sandwich eaters. We sat outside. Later, much later, on leaving the woods for the descent (top of last page) we were hit by a wall of inpenetrable fog. The other 4 elected to follow the official hilly home stretch (or their compasses and GPSes) to Saunderton. I didn't see them again. Doo doo doo doo. Doo doo doo doo. Mr Safe here decided to descend to the road and follow the pavement. This resulted in Mr Safe (just)catching the 16:59 and the others not catching it.