The Chilterns Cycleway — two long days and a wild camp
We had a short tour coming up, the NC 500 in Scotland, and we both knew we needed to road test ourselves and our kit. It’s good to stress test these things so we decided to have a crack at the Chilterns Cycleway, take two days over it and wild camp.
The route has the shape of a Spicy Niknak if you look at it on the map. Its westernmost point lies at Ipsden, close to Stoke Row and Checkendon (where incidentally I used to work as a RealMedia video streamer for a company called Two Hats back in the year 2000!), a neat little hamlet north of Henley-on-Thames. The northern apex, roughly 45 degrees and 80 miles northeast is a town called Pirton, close to Hitchin. It’s a road cycle so the terrain wasn’t going to be a problem. We were still looking at a couple of big days though and the Chilterns are a set of hills so it’s going to be…er….hilly.
The plan
We wanted to keep the two days similar in length and also make it easy (and cheap) to get there from London. We had talked about driving and leaving the car with the camping gear at the halfway point so we could avoid dragging the tents around the hills but as this was supposed to be a test of kit and fitness we opted for a train to Amersham. The idea being that we would make it to somewhere near Wendover before camping that night.
The Chiltern Hills form part of a chalk escarpment that runs from close to the south coast of England near Winchester northeast to Norfolk. When riding the route you will often intersect with long-distance routes such as the Icknield Way and the Ridgeway, both of which originate further south. It's a beautiful area, often wooded, peppered with fantastic examples of English architecture stretching back to pre-Normen times and on through the medieval period into the Georgian, Victorian and Edwardian ones. This makes for excellent cycling all year round, however, it will be Spring or Autumn, when the woods are full of colour, that you will find this route most rewarding.
We met up at Marylebone Station. Now if you are unfamiliar with this little gem nestled a few blocks west of Backer street tube then it's well worth a visit. The home of the Chilterns Railway you can ride as far a Birmingham on a separate line but others take you right into the Chilterns themselves in 45 minutes. It was a Saturday so we didn't need to reserve space for our bikes. Check here if you are making the journey as different rules apply in the week. We were only going as far as Amersham to join the route on its southern border with a plan to ride the route clockwise.
The route is very well signposted, you could probably ride it without a map or GPS file, however, I downloaded the ‘official’ route from here. To get an idea of what the terrain was like I took it into Komoot.
The profile was also an eye-opener. JFYI Komoot has recently usurped RidewithGPS as my go-to route planning app.
The ride
I don't need to say a great deal about the first days riding. It was as predicted; pleasant, hilly and beautiful. We had lunch in Henley-upon-Thames.
The camp
If you are planning to wild camp it's best to arrive at dusk. We were heading uphill, not for the first time that day, in the direction of Wendover. If I’m planning to wild camp I normally have an eye out for a quiet forestry track or section of copse as the end of the days cycling approaches. At the top of the climb, we found the National Trust car park for Coombe Hill. Normally I would shy away from spots like this but I had camped in some woodland close by when riding the Icknield Way the previous year so had an idea that it could provide us with a nice setting. We were looking to be unobtrusive and keep out of the way of other visitors to the site. After wheeling our bikes slowly along the paths in the woodland we were greeted by the view below.
We soaked up the atmosphere around the Coombe Hill Monument that included peerless views back down the chalk uplands to the southwest as the sun began to dip behind us. We enjoyed our dinner of re-hydrated bacon and fennel risotto. Taking de-hydrated food on these rides is really handy. You don't have the impractical faff of preparing a meal on a tiny stove, instead, you simply boil some water and pour it into silicone pouches with the dry gravel-like food, wait 30 mins and then tuck in. This also frees you up from having to eat in a cafe or restaurant or even find a supermarket.
Within 30 mins it was getting dark, we headed back into the wood. By this stage we were alone. We found a tiny clearing ringed by bushes and set up our one-man tents. Nicky in my Big Agnes fly creek and me in the Terranova Jupiter hooped bivy. We were quickly asleep.
The morning was a bit of a shock to the system. We knew the forecast was poor but waking to heavy rain on your tent and knowing you have no choice but to get up and break camp is never nice. It was 8 am. There was no room in the bivvy to get dressed so I decided the only thing I could do was exit the thing in the buff. I stood there naked in the heavy rain and laughed, glad not to be greeting any dog walkers!
We struck camp as quickly as we could, made sure we had left no trace behind us and got on the road. Note: Normally I would have liked to be in a more secluded place and I am certainly not advocating turning Coombe Hill into a naturist destination. I would advise anyone reading this to take more care in choosing a wild camp spot, there are any number of wooded sections on the route, leave yourselves enough time at the end of the day to get this right.
It rained heavily all morning. It took nearly 10k before we could find any shelter to have some breakfast. Nicky spotted what looked like an abandoned gatehouse with a shallow porch and did a u-turn to approach it. As we got a bit closer it turned out to be occupied. A young woman was leaning out of the window. She invited us to take shelter there. We captured some rainwater as it dripped from the porch roof, boiled it and made some coffee. We also used the boiled water to pour on our granola and reconstitute the powdered milk. It was a lovely breakfast in pretty miserable conditions.
The day was long and not a sunny as the previous one. Mainly on road but sections of bike path, this one being a section of the old Harpenden to Hemel Hempstead Railway, affectionately known as the Nicky line.
We were both pretty beaten as we closed in on the finish. We hadn’t done half of the ride on the first day so the second was going to be close to 100 miles, the hills kept coming. I think this photo of Nicky captures the beginnings of the exasperation we were both feeling by this point.
With 20 miles left to go, I primed my lodger, my friend Lorna, at home that I would be grateful if she could put a chicken that I had in the fridge in the oven at the point that I boarded the train, I was really looking for anything to keep our spirits up by this point. But then disaster; a puncture on a busy road coming into Berhampstead. We fixed it but the momentum had left us. With 15 miles left to do of the 170-mile route we abandoned the ride and jumped on the train at Berhampstead. We were both relieved to be sat down on comfy seats and being transported back to London.
So what did we learn here?
- It's a great route, probably best undertaken over a sunny weekend.
- Definitely doable in two days but best to break the back of it on day one (isn't this always a good idea!)
- Don’t take a hooped bivvy if you think you will be getting up in the rain
- Take more care choosing a wild camp spot. We had no issues on this occasion, but it’s just more courteous to be away from shared spaces.
If you plan to have a crack at this, drop me a line bivvytobothy@gmail.com
