County - Bucks and Herts
Elevation – 267m and 244m
Date – 23/07/2021
Distance – 6.5km
Elevation climbed - 45m
There's an argument that if you're going to County Top, you should walk up the actual hill. Whilst that's a noble idea, sometimes it's just impractical. To access the Buckinghamshire County Top, Haddington Hill, requires nipping off the A41, driving up a steep track, and entering a weird cross between a play area and a French service station, replete with families running amok in what's known as Wendover Woods - and paying £2.40 for the privilege of parking there. There might be another way up, but if there is I don't know it (and, in truth, couldn't be arsed).
Following the instructions, I left the car park and wandered into some woods fairly randomly, which my OS map told me was very close to the peak. I wandered around some paths but couldn't see any indication that this was the highest point in Buckinghamshire.
Was this the highest point in Bucks? Who knows
If it was the County Top, then I'd bagged it, and moved on to see if I could conquer Herts, which handily was about 3k away. I slipped into the woods and instantly the noise of the yapping children was gone. I disturbed a couple of roe deer as I shuffled through the ancient woodland before crossing a field to a road. Crossing into another field I was immediately surrounded by seven Red Kites. The Chilterns (high point of which I'd just left) are the home of the reintroduction of the Red Kite to England, which has been hugely successful (anyone driving down the M40 will see dozens of them) and clearly I'd happened upon some food source for them, as they circled around my head. I comprehensively failed to photograph this amazing phenomenon.
Observe the magnificence of the Red Kites
At the end of this field I crossed the border into Hertfordshire, and joined the long distance trail known as the Ridgeway. The Ridgeway was essentially England's first motorway; running from Wiltshire to Hertfordshire, its raised ground made travel easy across southern Britain for at least 5,000 years. There's a Levellers lyric which came to mind as I trod the ancient pathway:
Do I belong to some ancient race
I like to walk in ancient places
It was the height of summer, and I was beginning to smell like a Levellers fan as I walked through the hot afternoon into Pavis Wood, so I thought I'd best get a shift on.
Hitting the Ridgeway like a dreadlocked crusty
Pavis Wood itself is a typical old woodland, made up of beech, oak and ash, and an awful lot of squirrels. Using the OS app - which is amazing - I wandered off the main track until I found I was stood upon the highest point of Hertfordshire, which seemed to be squeezed between a holly tree and a field boundary.
Jubilation! Another County Top smashed
Ideally, I'd have found a circular route back to Wendover, but time was against me (I had a date with some beers) so I wandered back the way I came, gawping at lovely barn conversions, until I re-entered Wendover Woods.
As I did so I noticed a temporary sign informing me that due to various groundworks the circular route was not possible but one could "still access the County Top". Perplexed, I followed the pathway around a dark corner and came upon...
The Chiltern Summit! The County Top of Buckinghamshire did, after all, have quite a significant marker in the shape of a stone monument and the above engraved plate.
Everything felt better after that. I headed back to the car and headed for my third County Top of the day...
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