Pootler

  Link to GPX File of the Route   NB. The bridge at Temple Lock on this route has been closed (Sept '24). I will add an amendment to the route a.s.a.p. This route covers two landscapes, the Thames Valley and the Chiltern Hills. From Twyford Station, you head east across flat arable land before turning north and crossing the higher ground bordering the current course of the river. Descending, you cross the river at a lock, then climb around 100m to the wooded hills overlooking the beautiful valley of the Hamble Brook. After following this for a few miles, you coast down the hillside side and then along the valley road to Hambleden itself before recrossing the Thames at the eponymous lock. Leaving the south bank, you cross the valley side again before returning to Twyford. For the most part the route follows minor roads, but there is an avoidable stretch of about a mile of woodland path south of the Thames on the return leg. See ‘Route Tips’ below. The River is crossed at pi...

  GPX File of the Route   Midsomer & Medieval Murders This route uses minor roads and the Phoenix Trail to explores the Aylesbury Vale and some attractive old villages which were used as settings for the documentary series ‘Midsomer Murders’. It starts at Princes Risborough Railway Station. The initial 3 mile stretch to Chinnor is on a well used B Road and then turns north then west to continue towards Ewelme on quieter back roads. At Ewelme it pivots back to head for Thame on a more northerly route, passing through Chalgrove and the Haseleys before crossing the River Thame at Shabbington. From Thame it returns to Prices Risborough on the Phoenix Trail, a converted railway line.  There are some homeopathic climbs, the highest point being just 124m (near  Postcombe) and the lowest is around 40m. For more detail see the Route Tips. Zooming In Highlights are:   The ‘Midsomer Murders’ Villages. Almost every village here claims to have appeared in in...

Hillforts pepper our hills, maybe around four thousand across the country. At least we  have called them hillforts. But are they? It seems that they not always on hills and probably not usually forts. The label was pinned on them by Sir Mortimer Wheeler, one of the most revered pre-history pundits of the 20th century and a former Brigadier in the Army so he might just have seen what he was programmed to see!  Sir Mortimer Wheeler Gandalf in the City?   In my own search for a sound basis for generalisation, I drew on lots of visits, slogged my way through a fat tome on hillforts generally, waded through archaeology papers in the British Library, scaled a mound of local landscape history books and tiptoed into the prehistory nerd websites. After all that, they remained inscrutable.  Some do seem to have seen conflicts. We are confident that Cadbury in Dorset saw battles with the Romans.  Others were clearly built with defence in mind, for instance by adding a...