Walk Report

Christmas in the Chilterns, Saturday 3rd March 2018
4 walkers, 17 miles - leader Peter Aylmer
When the walk title was set, it was meant only to be a simple play on our lunchtime pub stop, in the hamlet of Christmas Common. Little did I know then that we would spend the whole day in the snow-girt landscapes of Christmas-card-Dickensian tradition! Alas - on a day when the national LDWA walks page turned into a sea of red thanks to cancellations - the weather might have cut the numbers a bit; that, and the unconventional means of access, the very wonderful Oxford Tube motorway bus that drops you just below the Chiltern ridge. But our dedicated hard core thoroughly enjoyed their tramp to the beautiful isolated church at Swyncombe, past last-chance toboggan families, up and down through wooded dells - who knew the Chilterns could have so many hidden side-valleys? - and finally through the National Nature Reserve at Aston Rowant. By now the thaw was starting to set in, and ahead of us we could see darker clouds. A quarter-hour into our bus ride home, the rain began, sweeping away the snow.
Photographs by Peter Aylmer; more by Bola Baruwa and Ian Fairweather on the group Facebook page

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