The Ridgeway

Kingston Blount → Princes Risborough

Distance: 6.21 miles
Ascent: 84 metres
Duration: 2 hours 3 minutes

Warren Cottage
« Not walked | Not walked »

When I was in primary school my parents ran the Icthyans youth group at our church in Chorleywood. Another member of the congregation owned a small cottage in the Chilterns, so every now and then the youth group would have a weekend away.

My memories of those weekends in the '70s are still quite clear. We'd have to leave the car at a bend in the road and walk a mile up a wooded track to get to Warren Cottage. The cottage had no mains utilities: water was heated on a stove and washing was al fresco with water drawn from the well. We'd go walking in the woods to collect firewood and stumble across the chalk cross.

I mention all this because the wooded track forms part of the Ridgeway so we walked past the cottage today, just south of Bledlow on Wain Hill. I understand it is now connected to mains utilities and a manhole cover hides the old well, but it's unmistakably the same place.