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hg137
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Rotten Row Pond
One of the questions we are often asked about our long-distance walks is “Do you walk between 2 cars, or use public transport ?”
Normally we use 2 cars and spend some time planning where we will park the cars – avoiding wherever possible extortionate car parking fees. Not only do we think about where our destination car will be parked on one journey, but it will double-up as the start car on the next. Does leaving the car in that location work for both trips ?
Our obvious car parking option for this route was to leave a car in Hambleden, and a car in Marlow town centre. This would have meant using expensive-ish Marlow car parks. (We later discovered these would have been reduced in size as the filming of “The Marlow Murder Club” was due to take place in the town centre.) We decided a better option was to park just short of Marlow, close to a bus route, and catch a bus to within a mile of Hambleden. This gave us a mile walk to Hambleden and four miles back to Marlow.
Leaving the bus, we attempted our first cache. A small magnetic nano hidden in Hambleden’s overflow car park. Despite looking for some time, pausing only for when a van pulled into the car park for the driver to use the nearby toilets – we failed to find the cache.
Our route took us into Hambleden, much quieter than the previous Friday when we were there. We had found all the caches in the village on the previous visit, so this time, we stopped on the village seat, had a coffee before resuming our walk. We had a steady ascent out of the village, with extensive views from the top.
Hereafter our walk was mainly flat across farmer’s fields, the hamlet of Rotten Row (with its delightful pond) and woodland. Like much of the woodland in the Chilterns, painted arrows on trees are used to waymark the paths, we found these particularly useful.
Hidden in the woodland were a couple of caches, one with an unsignable soggy log, the other near a precarious ‘wooden bridge tree trunk’ which were invited to walk over. We wimped out and walked around the ‘bridge’.
Every up has its down, and after about 3-3.5 miles we were descending down to Marlow and our car. The woodland gave way to stubby, grassy fields and as we walked saw a deer picking its way through the field, nibbling the vegetation. A surprising sight as we saw no deer when we walked through a deer park on previous walk, and yet today, just half a mile from a busy road was a deer in plain-ish sight.
A lovely end to a short walk.
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