14 Jun 2025: Summer Breeze ! Wigginton, Hertfordshire

This was a circular walk of 11.5 miles from Wigginton, W to Wendover Woods via the edge of Tring Park, SE beyond St Leonard’s into unnamed countryside, then NE to Wigginton via Buckland Common.

The weather was perfect walking weather, warm with a light breeze, with the sunlight bringing out the best of the fresh, springtime green in both crops and trees. A very enjoyable walk, interspersed with excellent facilities for lunch, a mid-route pub stop and an optional cake stop at the end of the walk.

The usual stats:

Event led by Khris T.
Attendance: 8 people.
Distance: 11.5 miles (18.5 km).
Altitude per GPS: low 810ft (246.9m), high 1040ft (317m), climb 252ft (76.8m), descent 305ft (93m).
Time: start 11:16, end 16:34 (sunset 21:22), lunch 38 minutes, other breaks 35 minutes.
Speed: moving arithmetic average 2.83mph (4.5kph).
Weather: sunny, temperature up to 24°C, westerly wind ~13mph (20.9kph).
Number of sewage works: 0.
Number of churches: 0.
Number of golf courses: 0.

Points of interest:

The whole route sat within the Chiltern National Landscape.
Wigginton Community Shop & Cafe is a superb starting point. It has a large car park, and plenty of other parking around the village. The coffee is excellent and the choice of cakes nudges to a satisfying end to a long walk.
At the southern edge of Tring Park, run by the Woodland Trust, is a large patch of woodland. At this time of year, trees’ leaves are out in full, providing good cover from the sun. Whilst we saw little of the parks’ grassland, we briefly saw a long distance view of Tring town.
We passed through the highest point in Hertfordshire, which is a bend in the road with absolutely nothing to mark it, by a gate going into Pavis Wood and thus into Buckinghamshire. According to OSM, the peak at Pavis Wood at ~244m.
Wendover Woods, run by Forestry England, hosts the highest point of Buckinghamshire, at 268m. The visitor centre is large, hosts an excellent cafe, plenty of seating and a fair amount of noise! The middle-distance views S-SW were very satisfying.
The route S from Wendover Woods passed through woodland and meadows. The loudest noise here was birdsong. Such a pleasant sound for what is basically a turf war between rivals.
At Buckland Hill, St Leonard’s, was the compulsory in-route pub stop at the White Lion. This was a strategic stop to maximise the pleasure of a break during a long walk on a warm day. The pub has a superb menu, with a distinctly Spanish flavour, with one member offering a sample of pimientos de padrons – a small bowl of green peppers sprinkled with bullets of sea salt – to the rest of us. This pub is worthy of Bah Humbug January lunchtime visit, and sits in excellent countryside for a short walk.
The elegance of the Chilterns continued to accompany us in our final leg to the start point at Wigginton, where the cafe remained open to force-feed us tea and cakes.