Further to my post yesterday, I’ve now realised that the captions under many of the photos on my web site are not being displayed by the Firefox browser. Very annoying – not sure if its a bug, or whether I’m using a feature of Microsoft Frontpage that Firefox no longer supports. I’ll have to investigate further, and report it if it is a bug. It’s because the captions have a font colour of ‘automatic’ – I really don’t fancy editing them all (there’s literally hundreds of them!) and changing the font colour to black.
Today was another day of grey overcast skies. I’m getting a bit fed up with them – I want to photograph some of my local walks and put them on my web site, but I really need nice days with bright blue skies to do it. As the photos I took on Monday’s walk confirmed, everything looks so dull and drab under heavygrey skies.
Anyway, to today’s walk. I set off to do Walk 4 of the Chiltern Chain Walk again, but ended up by varying the route slightly. I set off from the car park near Pitstone Hill just after 9.30am. It only took an hour and a quarter to go over Pitstone Hill, pass Tring Station and go on to Wigginton – I was progressing far more quickly than when I last did the walk because I wasn’t stopping to take photos. Another hour and a quarter and I’d descended back down to Cow Roast, climbed uphill to Tom’s Hill and reached the edge of Aldbury.
At this point I decided to extend the walk, otherwise I’d be back at my car by 1pm. So I took the route of the Chiltern Way that rises steeply uphill into Ashridge, then turned left along a level bridleway that eventually joined the main path from Aldbury to the Bridgewater Monument. From the Monument I took another bridleway that ran through the woods for about a mile. Not far from Ringshall, I picked up the route of the Ashridge Estate Boundary Trail. I soon stopped to eat my lunch on a fallen tree, then followed the Trail past the small Ringshall Reservoir, and through a succession of sheep pastures to reach Ward’s Hurst Farm. I followed the farm drive to a road, crossed over and followed a path through the trees to reach the main track from the Monument to Ivinghoe Beacon.
I headed towards the Beacon, soon passing the dog kennels at Clipper Down. Soon after I forked left on a good path that headed easily downhill to reach a path junction with the Ridgeway, where I turned left and was soon back at my car.
This was a shorter walk than usual, only taking about 4 hours. It was very pleasant, despite the constant grey skies, but I didn’t see anything in the way of wildlife today at all – no interesting birds, no animals at all (except some Alpaca on a farm!) and not many wildflowers. It’s been noticeable how few butterflies have been flying on these grey days. I enjoyed having the flexibility to vary my route, and enjoyed the section through Ashridge from the Monument that I hadn’t planned on walking.