Great things to see and do from Chiltern Hundreds busesBuckinghamshire
Beech woods with a carpet of bluebells or gold leaves in the autumn pass by the windows of the Chiltern Hundreds buses. These seven bus routes connect High Wycombe, Amersham, Beaconsfield, Uxbridge, Slough and other towns, each with its own attractions: theatres, swimming pools, cinemas and shopping centres. But the Chiltern Hundreds buses, which run Monday to Saturday, can also transport you to rural escapes and hidden treasures, woodland walks and waterside strolls. Visit the cottage where poet John Milton lived or ancient Chenies manor with a garden full of roses. See Bekonscot model village or the Chiltern Open Air Museum – all without getting in a car.
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1. Milton's Cottage
The old cottage where John Milton lived and finished his epic poem Paradise Lost is a hidden gem of a museum right next to a bus stop. The poet moved here from London in 1665, escaping the Great Plague; his friend Thomas Ellwood hired the cottage for him, calling it “that pretty box in Giles, Chalfonte”. Milton’s Cottage is currently open on Wednesday to Sunday afternoons (book ahead) and has interesting displays about all stages of his life and work.
- Get there on bus 104 from outside Gerrards Cross station or from Beaconsfield. From Beaconsfield Station, you need to walk a couple of minutes to Maxwell Road to catch the bus. The journey takes about 20 minutes from either station.
- Get off at the bus stop called Milton Hill in Chalfont St Giles, which is almost outside the cottage.
- Don’t miss the cottage garden, which echoes Milton’s descriptions of Eden with flowers and fruit trees copied from his verse.
- There are plenty of places to eat and drink: Milton’s Indian restaurant right opposite to the pub, cafés, a bakery, and a deli on the nearby village green.
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2. Chiltern Open Air Museum
Well worth the wooded walk from the nearest bus stop, this veteran collection of reconstructed local buildings has granaries and apple stories, lambing fields and cattle byres. The Chiltern Open Air Museum is a beautiful place for a stroll. Besides thatched barns, cottages with patchwork bedspreads and flowering gardens, there’s a brick toll house from High Wycombe, a prefab bungalow from Amersham, wartime Nissen huts, and even an Edwardian cast-iron public loo.
- Get there on bus 105 from outside Amersham station. Get off at the London Road stop. Walk a few steps further in the direction the bus was going and turn left up a path signed Chiltern Way. Follow the signs along pretty paths for twenty minutes to arrive at the entrance to the museum.
- Refreshments include tea, cake and sandwiches from Skippings Barn.
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3. Walks along the Chiltern Way
The lovely Chiltern Way is a long-distance route, which rambles for more than 100 miles around the Chilterns Area of Outstanding Natural Beauty. It was created by the Chiltern Society to showcase the prettiest parts of the area. The Chiltern Hundred buses are perfect for sampling short stretches of the route. Simply follow the signs from bus stop to bus stop with refreshments at the end in case you’re early for the bus. In fact, these pubs and cafés are so good, you might decide to skip the next bus and have an extra pint or slice of cake…
Chalfont St Giles to Chenies (4 miles) A wooded walk along Old Shire Lane and through the rolling fields. Look out for roe deer and buzzards wheeling overhead.
- Start: Bus 105 to London Road stop.
- Refreshments and End: Bus 103 from Garden Centre. The Van Hage garden centre has a popular café, where you can have tea and cake while you wait for the bus. Or stroll a couple of minutes more into the village for the Red Lion and Chenies Manor.
Coleshill to Chalfont St Giles (3 miles) Over the rolling hills near Hodgemoor Woods and then south along the Misbourne Valley to one of the Chilterns’ prettiest villages.
- Start: Bus 103 to Quarrendon Farm.
- Refreshments and End: There are some great pubs and cafés in Chalfont St Giles, including the riverside Merlin’s Cave with a big marquee and lots of benches in the garden. When you’re ready to head home, bus 104 goes from the High Street nearby.
Holtspur to Forty Green (3 miles) This varied walk is very easy to get to, with buses every 15 minutes, and passes one of the oldest and most amazing pubs in the country: the Royal Standard of England, full of log fires and ancient candlelit corners.
- Start: Buses 101, 102, 103 or 104 to North Drive. Cross the grassy area into Kiln Court and continue on a footpath past St Thomas Church.
- Refreshments and End: When the Chiltern Way reaches the road at Forty Green, keep straight to find the pub. You can either walk back the way you came or leave the Chiltern Way and follow local footpaths for a mile to Beaconsfield Station (buses 102, 103 and 104 on Maxwell Road nearby).
4. Bekonscot Model Village
The world’s oldest original model village, Bekonscot in Beaconsfield perfectly preserves a 1930s landscape of cricket on the green, trawlers in the quay and morris dancers in the town square. The children’s author Enid Blyton lived nearby. Her house Green Hedges is long gone, but a model persists at Bekonscot with a little Noddy car outside. There are clever moving elements, like trains and cable cars, fairgrounds and farmyards, as well as water features like fountains outside the stately home or a rustic working watermill. The “village” is actually seven different model towns all with their own distinct characteristics.
- Maxwell Road in Beaconsfield is the nearest bus stop (buses 102, 103 and 104).
- From here, walk to the main road, turn right over the railway and right again at the sign into Warwick Road. Bekonscot is on the left opposite St Teresa’s church.
- As well as a café on site, there is Jungs coffee shop at the end of the road with really tasty croques messieurs and fruit tarts with delicate pastry.
5. Beaconsfield Old Town
Three stops on the bus from Maxwell Road, Beaconsfield’s Old Town (lovingly recreated in Bekonscot) has a flint-walled church, old coaching inns, creeper-covered cottages, and a fabulous market every Tuesday. Get off at the Saracen’s Head for the church and market.
- In the market, you can pick up locally-distilled gin and locally-baked bread, homemade jams, chilli sauces and sometimes Jamaican ginger cake from Sam’s, fruit and veg from Crawford’s or award-winning Chiltern sheep’s cheese from the Marlow Cheese Company.
- If you need some ideas for places to take a picnic, check out the local woods (see 6 below). The same woods that have bluebells in spring are full of green summer shade or orange, gold and even scarlet in the autumn.
6. Bluebells by bus
The beechwoods that surround the Chiltern Hundreds bus routes are full of bluebells from around mid-April to early May each year. You can often see them from the bus window as it winds through the woods, but here are four places where you can get closer to this spectacular natural phenomenon.
- Hodgemoor Woods is just five minutes’ walk along Rawlings Lane from the Newbarns Lane bus stop on the route of bus 104. The nearby village of Seer Green is known as ‘the cherry pie village’ because of the number of old cherry orchards and you can still see trees in blossom there each spring.
- Hervines Park is a popular urban park, ten-minute stroll from bus 103 (Oakfield Corner bus stop). There are good views of bluebells (protected by fences) as well as a playground for kids and cafés in nearby Amersham.
- Westwood Park in Little Chalfont is fifteen minutes from bus 103 (Church Grove stop) and is a great starting point for walks in the peaceful springtime woods and along the Chess Valley (see 8 below).
- Hughenden Park. For a slightly longer walk through some lovely countryside, the home of former prime minister Benjamin Disraeli is surrounded by picturesque paths and waymarked trails. It is two miles from High Wycombe High Street (buses 101, 102, 103 and 104), mostly through stream-side trees.
7. Wycombe Museum and beyond
If you’ve ever wondered why there are so many beechwoods in the Chilterns, take a look at the exhibitions in Wycombe Museum. High Wycombe was once the chair-making capital of the world and many of the area’s woods were planted in the eighteenth century to grow timber for the furniture industry.
- Buses 101, 102, 103 or 104 all stop on the High Street. It’s just a four-minute walk from there to the museum.
- For more adventures in the area, have a look at our car-free guide to High Wycombe. Bus 40 runs to West Wycombe, where you can visit the Hellfire Caves, hilltop mausoleum, historic village and stately home.
8. Chenies Manor
Tudor Chenies Manor, generally open a couple of times a week from April to October, has an eclectic interior and beautiful gardens. Don’t miss the summer roses and borders of lavender and cranesbill. Bus 103 stops about five minutes’ walk away at the stop called Garden Centre.
- The house is one of many locations in the area for Midsomer Murders and has also appeared in Lewis, Me Before You, Little Dorrit and Poirot.
- The ten-mile Chess Valley Walk, from Rickmansworth to Chesham, also runs nearby and makes a beautiful day out. You can shorten the route by catching the bus and so break it up into bite-sized rambles.
9. Black Park and other film locations
This beautiful area is home to some famous film studios like Pinewood so it’s not surprising it’s appeared on the big and small screen so many times. Casino Royale, the Harry Potter films, Lara Croft Tomb Raider and Phantom of the Opera were all filmed in the Black Park Country Park with its picturesque lake and miles of heath and woodland.
- The new 106 and 107 bus routes run nearby. Get off at Fulmer Common Road and walk carefully beside Fulmer Common Road for fifteen minutes, turning right at the end into Black Park Road to find the entrance. Or, for a car-free route, get off at the Black Horse in Fulmar and follow the Beeches Way.
- You can also walk from these bus routes to Burnham Beeches, especially lovely in the autumn. Several famous films were also shot here, from Robin Hood Prince of Thieves to Goldfinger.
- The Chiltern Open Air Museum (see 2 above) is also a favourite film location. Midsomer Murders, Call the Midwife, Downton Abbey, Horrible Histories and several more series have all used its interesting variety of landscapes and buildings.
10. Denham and the Grand Union Canal
Buses 101, 102, 104 and 105 all run through the lovely village of Denham in the Colne Valley Natural Park. Gabled brick cottages, wreathed in wisteria, and walks beside lakes, canals and rivers are all within easy reach of the bus stops.
- Several long-distance routes, like the Colne Valley Way or the Grand Union Canal Walk, lead visitors along the area’s waterways.
- You could hike 8 miles beside the canal from Uxbridge (buses 101, 102, 104 and 105) to Rickmansworth (bus 103).
- Or simply head ten minutes through the village from Denham Avenue to the pretty Swan Inn for a pint or stroll a mile or so along the South Bucks Way to Fran’s Tea Garden for waterside scones.
