14/03/20 - Chiltern Chain Walk - Stage 5 - Wendover Woods

Distance - 13 Miles
Geocaches - 10
Walk Inspiration
Pub - Kings and Queen, Wendover
Previous Stages - Stage 1, Stage 2, Stage 3, Stage 4

Today was meant to be the Bermondsey Beer Mile. For reasons that I cannot spell, I wouldn't have been a completer.

STATEMENT ON COVID-19 & FOURPURE

We want to update you on the impact of the health pandemic and how it will affect our people & our venue. Unfortunately from today we will also be closing our taproom for the immediate future. See blog for more details. https://t.co/iUJAcqi3d1

— Fourpure Brewing Co. (@fourpurebrewing) March 14, 2020

Instead, I'll use the opportunity to walk the 5th Stage of the Chiltern Chain walk and get a Tick from the Good Beer Guide that may well be the last for a while. Who would have thought #CloseThePubs would be a thing?

Today's ramble starts at Wigginton, visited briefly on the last leg. A free car park at the village swings far more appealing than the official start at Wendover Woods visitor centre, where the car parking is eye watering.

Most of the kids here were called Hugo, so I guess they can afford it

This is a pleasant enough walk - challenging in length and on good paths.   Its just a bit samey and with no refreshment places to stop at en route. The first half is through the Ridgeway Woodlands, high on a ridge, with expansive views over the vale of Aylesbury. I can bring pictures of trees or views or to save space, a bit of both.

Tress and Views at a Geocaching GZ

A break from the trees, as we drop to the valley floor, before I'm back in trees in Wendover Woods.  Despite the parking costs, it's very popular.

A short break from the woodland

Returning to the start requires following Grim's Ditch for 4 miles.   No one quite knows what the Ditch was used for and taking photos is pointless.  Best to explain.  An anglo saxon earthworks where a trench of around 2ft was dug and the earth stacked up on one side. Its arrow straight. When its not full of mud and water, there is an occasional Geocache.   May have been a boundary marker but no one can say for certain. Still marked on the OS Map.

Enough of the history and into Wendover for refreshment. A toss up between the Good Beer Guide entries of the King and Queen or the Pack Horse.

King and Queen Wins this time

As of 3pm on a Saturday Afternoon, the evening St Patricks Day celebrations were still taking place.  It's doing better than Birmingham or London, although I hear Manchester are stoically pressing on.

Through that front portal, you have a choice of going left to the bar or right to the bar/restaurant.  You'd be hard pushed to tell which one I chose from the this picture postcard perfect view of a comfortable drinking area.

Bar/Restaurant

Eavesdropping had to occur when I heard a chap asking the bar man if he had heard what had happened to John after his week at Cheltenham races?  I was there on Thursday and on tenterhooks as to whether he had developed an uncontrollable dry cough.

Turns out he had drank 15 pints a day for four days and isn't very well.

Panic over for now.

If this is going to be the last pub blog for a time - the Irish Public are demanding a closure to all pubs and the UK cannot be far behind - then I go out for now with a magnificent Timothy Taylor Landlord.

See you on the other side.

The Guvnor