Friday, 31 December 2010
Chilterns and Thames Valley
A rather dull walk
Distance: 3.41 miles
Ascent: 51 metres
Duration: 1 hour 7 minutes
Walk 2: Hedgerley and Burnham Beeches
This final walk of the year was a bit of an anticlimax to be honest. Although it looked to be a woodland walk, much of it was constrained on both sides by wire fences or "Keep Out" signs.
Burnham Beeches must hold some fantastic routes, but this wasn't one of them. We would have been much better off just idly exploring the woods on our own.
Thursday, 30 December 2010
Jubilee Walkway
Jubilee Walkway
Distance: 10.3 miles
Ascent: 92 metres
Duration: 3 hours 15 minutes
It was Queenie's idea
Here's a walk twenty years in the waiting. I probably first noticed the steel markers embedded in the pavement near some of London's big tourist attractions when I went to college. But for some reason, twenty years later I'd still not "joined the dots" and followed the entire walk.
The single circuit of the Silver Jubilee Walkway as it was then has since been split into two circuits and supplemented by three additional loops. Starting at Trafalgar Square we walked the Eastern and Western loops, trying to recreate the original walk. We'll have to return for the City, Camden and Jubilee loops another time.
And what a walk! Following it religiously opened our eyes to parts of London we'd never seen before. One particular highlight was the narrow alley of Godwin Court hidden between Covent Garden and Leicester Square.
At times the route was overcrowded with tourists - for example at Parliament Square and along the Albert Embankment - but mostly it was a perfect, genteel walk with which to work off some Christmas excess.
We detoured just once, to climb The Monument - something I'd not done since childhood. Despite being recently overhauled I loved the fact that this attraction seemed to have changed little. There was no sign of overbearing security: just one man at a desk taking the admission fee before allowing visitors to climb the 311 steps to the viewing platform.
Everyone who can get to London should do this walk, no matter how well they think they know the city. We advise those who do to check directions in advance: although the pavement markers are on the whole excellent and easy to follow, a few were missing and a couple were pointing in the wrong direction.
Sunday, 26 December 2010
Memories , Personal , Walks
The drove road
I'm not entirely sure why this long track around the edges of Helpston is referred to as 'the drove', but it's what Dad used to call it when the three of us - an ageing man and two slightly reluctant little girls - used to walk it during the long, hot summer days of the school holidays.
Today though, we walked it in the crisp whiteness of the snow and frost, the first time I'd revisited the old track in over twenty years; a wonderful way of refreshing old memories with new.