🥾 Walk 159 - Burnham Beeches and Hedgerley

Mike, the leader of this walk, has written this scrapbook entry and provided photos. Phil, a member of our group who was on the walk, has also contributed a photo.

On Saturday 16th May, twelve of us joined the walk including one new person, Hayley, invited to the walk by Tendi. The walk was essentially a repeat of walk 26 from January 2013 with the aim of completing a loop missed last time due to flooding. Due to the short notice of the walk being included in the programme, our leader, Mike, had not recently pre-walked it but relied on his memory from 2013 and had his map to hand as backup.

We started the walk by the Beeches café on Lord Mayor’s Drive in the Burnham Beeches national nature reserve. The reserve was acquired in 1880 under The City of London’s Open Spaces Act of 1878 and now attracts half a million visitors a year so is a popular recreational location.

The walk started by heading along the tarmac drives first in a north-west direction on Halse Way and then east on Dukes Drive through the nature reserve. We left the main open access area by Great Burnt Coppice and Egypt Woods and then walked with care for 0.5km along Egypt Lane. Here we turned off right on a footpath, crossed the busy A355, along another short path before joining a quieter lane. Next we turned left into Andrew Hill Lane before taking a footpath through what looked like a deer gate down some woodland where blue bells were again seen in abundance, it seems to have been a particularly good year for them.

Having walked down Kiln Lane and given the village hall disco a miss we joined the main road in the village of Hedgerley, a Buckinghamshire Best Kept Village winner for 2014. We turned off right by the pond into a series of meadow type fields next to the Church Wood nature reserve. An early relaxing lunch was taken at the far end of the meadow with the sun shining throughout.

After lunch we skirted around the nature reserve on a sunken footpath and dropped down into the village of Hedgerley by Saint Mary the Virgin parish church. Next followed a drink stop at the very pleasant looking White Horse pub. A pub specialising in real ale, judging by the selection on offer.

Suitable refreshed we walked through the village, re-traced our steps along Kiln Lane and continued up a track to Pennlands Farm. We next crossed back into the northern section of Egypt Woods and exited at Abbey Park Farm. Some quiet lane walking followed and next we crossed the open access land called Littleworth Common which seemed to have grown up a lot since the last visit. We exited the open access land, passed the Blacksmith Arms pub and returned to our start via Dorney Wood and Halse Drive back in the Burnham Beeches reserve with a nice hill to complete the walk.

Finally back at the Beeches café some of us had a well-deserved drink and a few also had cake to finish the day off before heading home. Mike was relieved his memory from 2013 was working!

We do not have the usual detailed route map but if anyone wants the full route details, please contact Mike.

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