I have updated my web site again today, adding three more walks in the Chiltern Hills – local walk to Totternhoe, circular walk from Chesham, and the Chenies/Chess Valley walk I did yesterday.
Rather than write everything from scratch a second time, I have basically cut and pasted the descriptions of the walks from this blog, edited them in a few places and added the photographs.
Much to my surprise, the statistics tool my web host provides shows that about 10 people a day visit this blog! I’m very grateful (surely you must have better things to do!), so I thought it was about time that I shared with you what I’m actually doing at the moment.
As you’ve probably noticed, I am currently having great fun walking circular routes in the Chiltern Hills. So far these have all been good walks and some have been excellent, as good as any walks I’ve done in southern England. Now, believe it or not, there is actually a bit of reasoning behind the somewhat random nature of these walks – I want to devise my own long-distance path through the Chiltern Hills, and the walks I’m doing now are ‘research’ for this project. I’ve been thinking of places I’d like to visit (or more usually revisit), and looking at the maps to find ways of linking them together.
I don’t really expect anyone else will ever walk this long-distance path that I’m devising. It’s just something I’ve wanted to do for a long time, inspired by something that Alfred Wainwright once wrote. As well as writing those wonderful ‘Pictorial Guides to the Lake District’ (not to mention the beautiful coffee-table books with photos by Derry Brabbs), the great AW also devised the ‘Coast-to-coast path’, which I believe is now the most popular long-distance path in England. In his guide book for that walk, he said that he didn’t want people to just follow in his footsteps on that path – he wanted to inspire people to create their own routes. Well, thirty years after reading that and thinking it was a very good idea, I’m finally doing something about it!
I think it will probably take me another couple of months to do the necessary ‘research’ walks. I might then take a short break from the Chilterns and do something else, such as the North Beds Hertitage Trail, before walking and documenting my new long-distance path (I’d prefer to walk it in the spring and summer months).
I don’t think I’ll be adding too many more of the ‘research’ walks to my web site, because I don’t want there to be too much duplication when I finally add my long-distance path to the web site. But you’ll be able to read about the ‘research’ walks here on my blog, and eventually some parts of these walks will appear in my journal for my new cross-Chiltern walk.
If you have any thoughts or suggestions regarding my long-distance path through the Chilterns, or anything else to do with my walks, feel free to add a comment to this blog, or else email me at pete@petes-walks.co.uk