Wendover.
Now once more the Icknield Way is thrown out of its course for a little way, this time by Akeman Street, a modern road to Aylesbury, the ancient road from this region to Cirencester, which was the junction for Wales, Devon, and Cornwall. It enters Akeman Street a third of a mile east of the thirty-third milestone from London. The Icknield Way was presumably older; it was at least old when Akeman Street was Romanized and came cutting in a straight line across its meanders; and therefore it lost confidence for half a mile and forsook them and took to the Roman straight line until suddenly stumbling upon itself again at one of its meanders further on it returned to its old way. The scene is like the picture of a wandering life interrupted by a year of discipline. The stark telegraph-posts in line seem part of the discipline. Possibly for years, for centuries, the meanders survived, more and more faintly, with the straight line, enclosing a rough and crooked space. This space beside Tring Hill should have been a common for ever; but either it never was or a common award handed it over to the largest mouth. Opposite the milestone it turns out from the main road in its old south-westerly direction, and escapes the telegraph-posts. For some time it was unlike its old self because it had hardly any grassy margin. It went up and down again and again, and often steeply, and the more hilly a modern road the less likely it is to have wide margins. Near Halton there was a wayside border but little if at all trodden, and not fed down by sheep. A traveller joining the road for a mile or so would have failed to see in it any distant or ancient purpose; it was a winding country lane metalled for modern uses, and by Halton House made polite with firs and laurels. In one place, as we neared Wendover, I saw the old course and its bank and also a hedge beyond the present one. Past Halton Woods the hills recede southward and there is a gap of a mile between steep Boddington Hill and steep Bacombe Hill. Through this gap comes the road from London, Uxbridge, and Amersham to Aylesbury, and the railway with it: at the entrance stands Wendover. Through this long little town of cottages the Icknield Way goes as High Street and Pound Street. We were now close under Bacombe Hill, with its camp and barrow. In front, jutting out and making the road curve west before it could resume its south-west course by a sharp turn south, lay the Coombe Hill and its obelisk, Beacon Hill sprinkled with thorns, and Pulpit Hill. As we climbed the lower slopes of Bacombe Hill I noticed that the roadside green had been dug up and enclosed by a second hedge. Beyond there was a good green margin now on the left and now on the right, and beeches rustled from the hedges; and on both sides grew corn. The road went up and down, coming thus suddenly in sight of Ellesborough Church tower rising pale ahead out of its trees against the clear line of the hills. Past Butler’s Cross, where the road from Aylesbury to Hughenden and High Wycombe crosses, the sycamores on the left were beautiful, and so were the beeches, wych-elms and ashes following, and then more sycamores, and still more in a cluster above the high bank by Ellesborough Church. The Chekers Park limes and ashes on the left cooled the road until we came to a pool and Little Kimble Church. Then there were more park trees, lime and elm and chestnut, as we went up to the church tower of St. Nicholas at Great Kimble.
Ellesborough Church.
At Great Kimble—at the “Bear and Cross”—I got tired of riding at a walk up steep hills and down steep hills, and I took to my feet again. Just before the second milestone from Princes Risborough, in obedience to my map, I turned to the left and took the right-hand road at a fork. For a quarter mile this was a narrow chalky lane, having at its entrance a sycamore and a thatched cottage, and traveller’s joy all over its low hedge; but crossing a road from Great Missenden it became more important, hard and white, with a green border. I climbed up past the “Red Lion” at Whiteleaf, under Whiteleaf Hill, crossed the Wycombe road, and went down a hedged and rutty lane, leaving the spire of Princes Risborough half a mile below on the right. The way was some distance up on a steep slope, and itself in places so steep from side to side that there were two tracks, one two yards above the other. Then it was a broad track of level turf, next a narrow and rough one, the ruts, as near the Horsenden road, mended with lemonade bottles and meat tins. That road also thwarts the Icknield Way, and diverts it half a mile to the left; an old course seemed perhaps to be indicated by a hedge continuing the line of the lane behind. Turning to the right out of this road the Icknield Way was white with green edges, of which one presently became a terrace above the road. Over one railway and under another its level green edges were trimmed with silver-weed; in the hedges there were elms. Past the Bledlow road it was a broad, rough lane, soon green, between hedges; the Chilterns and Wain Hill woods on the left, charlock on the right. It climbed until at the “Leather Bottle” it reached its highest point since Telegraph Hill, and it had woods both above and below—which rarely happens to it—as it passed above the head of a beech-sided coombe having an entrance apparently higher than its back. There were roses in the hedges through these beech woods. The “Leather Bottle” marked the far edge of the wood and the passing of the border into Oxfordshire. Here a steep track slanted down from the hill-top. The road was now narrower, confined by a hedge and bank on the right and the steep wall of the thorn and juniper hill on the left. Presently another deep track came slantwise down from Chinnor Hill towards Bledlow and crossed my way. Beyond this the vale was lovely. At the foot of the hill beyond the railway which followed it was an irregular space of two or three square miles, nearly level but not quite. This was divided into large fields of grass or corn by scarce perceptible hedges or ditches, and crossed by one winding road visible and white at only one of its bends. Along this road and the hedges a very few elms were distributed with indescribable felicity. There would be five at a bend; a row, then a break, and only one or two more; and they made only one long line. One of the fields so divided was lemon-coloured with charlock; on one which was slightly tilted up a few sheep were scattered. Beyond and on either side of this space the trees were thicker, and closed in so that two or three miles away all seemed woodland with an interspace or two, then a grey, dim ridge beyond, all under a grey-folded sky. Above the juniper hill the jackdaws were jacking merrily.
Near the “Leather Bottle.”