Day 5: Thursday 3 August. Watlington to Wendover (17 miles)
Richard's parents collected us from the B&B at 9:00, and delivered us to our start point at Watlington. The two of us and Mum were walking by 9:30, while Dad took the car home.
It was quite a different walk as Mum enthusiastically pointed out every flower along the way. The scenery is now changing as we entered the beech forests that are so prevalent in this area. We are now noticeably closer to civilisation all the time. We could see the pits at Chinnor, and passed close to many gardens and through some golf courses.
The weather was a bit grim today. It was windy and damp, and a bit cold. We would not have wanted to walk without our coats.
As we passed to the south of Princes Risborough, Mum decided she would walk all the way to Wendover with us, so we kept on walking up the hill towards White Leaf Cross.
This section of the walk was really interesting. There was a lot of ups and downs as we went from White Leaf Cross to Chequers and then up to the monument on top of Coombe Hill in a very short space of time. We saw many huge snails. We looked them up in a book that evening and thought they may have been Chalk Hill snails.
As we climbed Coombe Hill there were a lot of butterflies; they were the same shape and size as Chalk Hill blues, but not the same colour. During the afternoon it brightened up considerably, and we felt able to take our coats off. The view from the monument was excellent.
From Coombe Hill we went down Baccombe Hill and were met by Dad by the road. We were then driven back to Aylesbury for our evening meal. The weather was good enough for a barbecue by then, so we had beef steak (tuna steak for Hil) with loads of vegetables from the garden.
The next day's forecast was a lot better, so we fell asleep hoping!