Road to Home 2022 Day 18: Hockliffe - Berkhamsted

27 km 

The morning began with another kilometre along the sidewalk of the A5 to Dunstable Road, which promised to bring me to Tilsworth in three quarters of a mile. I chose this route rather than walking back to Hockliffe to pick up the trail again there, partly because I'd rather walk forwards than back, and partly because Tony, in his description of the trail, reported having trouble getting through a field of young and very curious cattle on the footpath out of Hockliffe. Eight years have gone by since, and those cattle must be either mature adults or hamburgers by now, but they may well have been replaced by others and the name Bull Farm on a housing estate I had passed in Hockliffe suggested this might be an ongoing concern in the area, and I have already had my adventure with curious cattle! 

So I opted for a quiet country road through Tilsworth, which seemed to be celebrating the Queen's Platinum Jubilee with a scarecrow contest featuring such iconic British figures as a Buckingham Palace guard, Elton John, James Bond, and the Queen's own corgies. 

I walked along the road from Tilsworth into the chalk hills of Totternhoe Nature Reserve. Chalk has been quarried in Totternhoe since the Middle Ages, and still is. The path took me around the working quarry and through the nature reserve, then through the wheat fields and along a road to join Sewell Greenway cycling path into Eaton Bray. 

Chalk hills of Totternhoe 

I spotted a prominent bump on the landscape, but it never occurred to me that I would soon be clambering up it! The first real climb in 18 days of walking in England took me up to the top of Ivinghoe Beacon, with sweeping views in all directions. On this Jubilee bank holiday, there were plenty of picnickers scattered over the grass at the top, and plenty of walkers on the paths through the Ashridge Estate. This National Trust property includes what was formerly Pitstone Commons, where those without land of their own could put their animals out to graze. Only in the past century or so, since people have stopped using the land for grazing livestock, have trees grown on the land. 

These hills are made of chalk! 

I emerged out of the trees at Bridgewater Monument, where I met my friend Jennifer, her husband Matthew and their pug Pippin to walk the rest of the way to Berkhamsted together. Jennifer is my oldest friend, not in age but in terms of how long we have known each other and continuously kept in touch. We met within the first few days of our first year at university, and at the end of that year we came over from Canada to London together; she was with me when I met my husband exactly 37 years and one day ago! So it was very fitting that my personal pilgrimage along St. Bernard's Way, touching upon my birthplace, and that of my mother, grandfather, and great-grandfather, should also pass right by Berkhamsted, where Jennifer has lived most of her adult life! 

Jennifer and Matthew finding the way out of Ashbridge Estate

Jennifer and Pippin at home