Last week I walked from Wendover to Amersham.....about 12 miles....following the route of the proposed new High Speed rail line. I have wanted to do this for a long time. Not as a speed challenge but rather to meander
and discover the secrets that lie either side of the A413, a road that I have driven along twice a day for almost the last twenty years. I set off at dawn, had morning coffee in Crumbs, a beautiful picnic lunch in Great Missenden and afternoon tea in Old Amersham. I discovered overgrown mill ponds and an old snack van that had swallows nesting in it. I sat in the sun and ate blackberries from the hedge. I found Roald Dahl's grave and a free library on the edge of Great Missenden. Wildflowers and woodpeckers. I laughed with the locals of Little Miss and discovered that the River Misbourne flows under the Amersham bypass. This valley will never be the same once they start building the new railway. Landscapes are never static but I wonder how many of these secrets will be lost or irrevocably damaged?
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