Walks by bus: Oxford Tube

While the Oxford Bus Company’s X90 service glides effortlessly up the white chalk scar made by the M40, the rival Stagecoach bus turns off to make a stop near Lewknor.

This bus stop is just a few hundred yards away from one of Oxfordshire’s finest wildlife habitats, the chalk grassland of Aston Rowant National Nature Reserve.

And bus passengers can feel smug that — though they face a short uphill stretch at the start of their walk — they will have a downhill amble at the end, while car users will face a last-ditch struggle to regain the height they lost leaving their parking space at the top.

To reach the nature reserve from the bus stop, walk east and cross the busy B4009 with care, finding a footpath sign at the junction with the motorway slip road. Walk around the field uphill to reach the Ridgeway trail.

At this point it follows the line of Icknield Way, an ancient route dating back up to 3,000 years. From here, several circular walks are signposted around Beacon Hill. It is difficult to miss the red kites, one of the great conservation success stories of recent times.

This is one of the sites where they were first introduced between 1989 and 1994, having been imported from Spain by the RSPB and English Nature. Watching the dozens of birds soaring and gliding in the thermal currents, it is difficult to believe that they are all descended from the one or two dozen pairs which were reintroduced at a time when the bird was almost extinct in England.

They are now so popular that warnings have been issued to people who put out food to attract these magnificent birds of prey, which need to eat whole animal carcasses with skin and bone.

The reserve is also rich in autumn fungi, while the red berries of whitebeam and hawthorn attract redwing and fieldfare.

If you want a longer walk, ignore the first nature reserve signs and walk south-west along the Ridgeway to pass under the M40, where the reserve continues, with more circular walks signposted around the wonderfully-named Linky Down and Bald Hill.

Personally, I prefer this side, since the noise from the motorway disappears as soon as you enter the Old Cricketground Plantation below Bald Hill. Lewknor’s present-day cricket ground, incidentally, is just behind the bus stop for the return journey to Oxford.

One word of warning. These are proper hills, of a kind which are quite rare in Oxfordshire. I organised a walk here to train for an Alpine trekking holiday, and it certainly made me feel my lack of leg muscles.

The compensation is that the views from the top are glorious, giving a panorama of the Thames Valley, from Didcot Power Station through Shotover to Muswell Hill and beyond.

This is where I picture the dramatic opening of Ian McEwan’s novel Enduring Love, in which a man plunges to his death from a hot-air balloon.

“Across the Vale of Oxford we could make out the outlines of the Cotswold Hills and beyond them, perhaps, the Brecon Beacons rising in a faint blue mass,” says the narrator, who has walked to his picnic spot from Christmas Common.

Another reason to savour these views is that some of the local footpaths were the subject of fierce campaigns fought by ramblers, including Kate Ashbrook of the Open Spaces Society. Part of nearby Shirburn Hill is now open access land, where you can wander at will.

At the top of Bald Hill, you can cross the road into Cowleaze Wood for a foray into Buckinghamshire. There was once a sculpture trail here and, although the funding was withdrawn some years ago, it is fun to try to spot the now overgrown installations.

The Cowleaze footpath joins a bridleway offering a circular tour of the Wormsley estate, owned by the Getty family, now the venue for Garsington Opera.

The bridleway, in turn, connects to the Chiltern Way, and this path offers a good view of Wormsley’s cricket ground, where a red telephone box sits next to the thatched pavilion. Celebrity guests have apparently included Mick Jagger and the Queen Mother, while Brian Lara and Graham Gooch scored centuries here.

Possible refreshment stops include the Fox at Ibstone, a quiet gastro pub and hotel with friendly staff and newspapers to read, or the Fox & Hounds at Christmas Common, which also welcomes walkers.

Christmas Common may possibly gets its name from a Chrismas truce during the Civil War, when the Royalists held the heights of the Chilterns while Cromwell's men pitched down below in Watlington. However, others, more prosaically, say that Christmas Common is named after the surrounding plantations of Christmas trees.

If you get as far as this, you may want to take the Oxfordshire Way and then a link footpath downhill to Watlington, where the hourly 106 Thames Travel bus will take you back to Oxford via Grenoble Road (last bus leaves 5.40pm, 5.45pm on Saturdays, no Sunday service).

But it would be a pity to miss Watlington Hill, owned by the National Trust, which offers fine views as the Chiltern escarpment plunges away to the chequerboard Oxfordshire plain. In the middle distance is the Thames. In the misty distance, you can pick out the Cotswolds, arcing round to the possible faint outline of Uffington White Horse on the Marlborough Downs.

The unusually short turf, grazed by rabbits, hosts an extraordinary variety of wild flowers. It’s a little late in the year now for butterflies, but if the sun shines you might see the rare silver-spotted skipper. And autumn starts in late summer here, with the early turning leaves of the wayfaring trees and spindleberries.

From the top, you can walk down past Watlington’s answer to the White Horse, called the White Mark.

This chalk sign in the shape of an obelisk has such a geometrical shape that the first time I saw it, I thought it might be part of an archaeological survey — a reasonable guess since several burial grounds have been unearthed in the area.

In fact, it is believed to have been dug in 1746 on the orders of Edward Home, who felt St Leonard’s Church in Watlington would look better with a spire. From certain viewpoints down in the valley, the chalk shape could perhaps appear to be a white spire on top of the church tower.

At the bottom of the hill, if tired, join the road to walk along the pavement to the 106 bus stop in Watlington, which is at the library, a little further down High Street from the cross.

Otherwise, join the Ridgeway to walk back to the Lewknor stop.

If you can’t manage steep hills, there is a fine circular walk which officially starts and finishes in Watlington, one of Oxfordshire's classic market towns. However, you can join it at the Lewknor bus stop by walking to Lewknor village, reached via concrete steps leading down from the B4009 near the return stop.

In Lewknor you can see the remnants of Town Pond, which once produced watercress transported to London daily by train. The Leathern Bottle is a traditional village local. Not only is it walker-friendly but it must be one of the few pubs to actually offer a walking guide on its website.

St Margaret's Church in Lewknor is also worth a visit. It is Grade 1 listed, dating back to the 12th century. The route passes Model Farm, built by Lord Macclesfield in 1857, when it was one of the most technologically advanced farms in the country.

The circular route, described on Watlington Parish Council’s website, takes in Pyrton, a tiny remote village with a handful of brick and flint houses. The 16th-century manor house, hidden in the park, was the home of Elizabeth Symeon, who married the English Civil War Colonel John Hampden in Pyrton church in 1619.

Watlington has plenty of pubs and shops, but is almost small enough to be a village, with 17th-century half-timbered houses and a gabled Town Hall, built in 1664 with funds provided by Thomas Stonor, of Stonor Park, near Henley. Hampden, leader of the Parliamentary army, stayed at the Hare and Hounds the night before the Battle of Chalgrove Field in June 1643 and is supposed to have given the landlord, Robert Parslow, a chest of money to pay troops. Hampden was fatally wounded and it is not known what happened to the chest. But some years later, perhaps driven by guilt, Parslow established a local charity to help the poor.

From here, the circular route follows the Ridgeway (Icknield Way) back to the Lewknor bus stop.

Incidentally, the Oxford-Lewknor journey is free to anyone holding a pensioners’ bus pass – a well-kept secret, since pass-holders pay for London buses, which count as express routes.

The Coalition is gradually increasing the concessionary age to at least 65, while Scottish and Welsh over-60s continue to benefit from free buses. It is one of life’s little ironies, however, that we have Margaret Thatcher to thank for the excellent Oxford-London bus service. Her ‘deregulation’ of the bus industry, allowing competition, had many bad effect, but the Oxford-Lewknor route was an undoubted winner. Enough of politics – get walking.

n The Oxford Tube runs every 10-15 minutes from Gloucester Green bus station in Oxford and Thornhill Park & Ride. For a full list of bus stops, see www.oxfordtube.com. Map: Ordnance Survey Map Explorer 171 Chiltern Hills West.

Circular walk leaflets available at http://www.nationaltrail.co.uk/ridgeway/uploads/watlingtonwalk4.pdf http://www.watlington-oxon-pc.gov.uk/Core/Watlington_Parish_Council/UserFiles/Files/watlington%20walk1.pdf Comments and contributions welcome on my website www.groundhogwalking.co.uk.