This delightful walk traverses some of the most beautiful and dramatic of the Chiltern countryside. It takes you along the Ridgeway and explores the antique village of Monks Risborough and the ancient hilltop settlement of Whiteleaf. These are both within the same parish boundary defined by a charter in 903 AD.
The walk begins alongside an old flint and brick schoolhouse. Flint was used a lot in local building because it is so abundant and easy to collect; grey-black boulders simply erupt through the soft local chalk. Knapping, the ancient art of chipping flint to manageable shapes and sizes, is reviving as a local craft in some villages, and knapped flint is once again being used in the building of new houses.
Very soon, there is a quite steep climb up the Ridgeway through magnificent, seemingly timeless beech woods. Though much of Buckinghamshire's beech woods were damaged in the gales of 1987, 1990, and increasingly by other storms in the present century, this part seems to have remained pretty well unscathed. However, there are some bald patches on the hillside where a particularly vicious blast has felled five or six of these giant trees.
In summer, sunlight plays on the tall, straight, green-grey trunks of the trees. In autumn, when the leaves are changing colour, the golds, greens, yellows, and reds are quite spectacular.
There is a deep dry valley on the left. Dry valleys are very much a feature of the chalky hills, and a number of them can be seen on this walk. Geologists believe that at the end of the Ice Age, a great surge of water poured down from the north; meeting with permafrost still in the chalk, it scoured these deep furrows until it found its way down to the soft, easily carved clay of the valleys, where it formed rivers.
Chalk absorbs water readily, and this surfaces usually in the form of springs where the clay bed meets the chalk. In places along the walk you can see that the villages were built along the spring line, where there would be a plentiful supply of water for crops and livestock.
Standing above Whiteleaf village is the chalky landmark of Whiteleaf Cross, a well-known 100-metre-high chalk hill figure which has been carved deeply into the hillside. About six miles away to the south, on the Ridgeway above the village of Bledlow, there is another cross cut in the hillside, though it is much smaller than the one at Whiteleaf and less dramatic.
From your position around the site of ancient Whiteleaf village, above the cross, you get a panoramic view of the broad saucer-like landscape of the Vale of Aylesbury, with its line of low hills to the north and the bustling little town of Princes Risborough below. Later, as you descend, there is a spectacular view of the cross from the field below.
While being home to two nature reserves, Whiteleaf Hill and neighbouring Brush Hill, this upland area is also home to other interesting archaeological features, including a Neolithic barrow and First World War practice trenches.
Deep in another valley lies Pyrtle Spring. Although it would once have provided a very useful source of water for grazing cattle, strangely, there are no habitable settlements nearby these days; it is just a muddy little pond surrounded by a rather gloomy and unkempt-looking group of trees. But even in the most severe droughts, Pyrtle Spring is never quite dry.
Kop Hill, home of the famous motorsport Kop Hill Climb, rises steeply with a splendid tree-girt dry valley on the right and a tall, ancient, scrubby hedge on the left. In springtime, the pungent smell of may blossom fills the air and dainty white flowers overhang the bank. In summer, wild honeysuckle takes over, and in autumn the hedge seems almost overwhelmed by the weight of great trusses of old man's beard.
Whiteleaf village is a hotchpotch of houses and cottages spanning the 16th to the 21st centuries. Built along the ridge of the hill, there are some remarkably well-preserved timber-framed brick cottages, and some of wattle and daub with a chalk overlay. The Red Lion pub is of 18th-century origin.
At the end of the walk, it is worth looking around the older part of Monks Risborough village and the 14th-century Church of St Dunstan. If you are lucky enough to find the church open, its cool interior is a haven of peace. Within the church, look at its tall beamed ceiling and the Norman "Aylesbury" font. The stained glass is modern for the most part, but there are 15th-century fragments in the chancel windows.
