Another weekend, another adventure. Alex and I were pleasantly surprised by the weather this weekend so grabbed our hiking boots and packs on Saturday and headed out to go walk some hills.
We decided to follow the Ashridge Drovers Long Walk for a good 6 mile Saturday afternoon escape. A quick train to Tring, and we caught up with the trail right outside the train station. Again, dressed in our hiking best, we felt a bit out of place with clunky boots & walking sticks, but really enjoyed taking the trails at a slower pace than usual.
The trail took us through Aldbury and then up, up and up to the Bridgewater monument. From there we followed the boundary trail (that was much more popular with mountain bikers, I was jealous of their wheels) towards the Ridgeway. Lovely and green with sneak peaks of the valley below it was a perfect afternoon walking route.
We met up with the Ridgeway and followed it over Pitstone Hill (even our hiking boots couldn’t stop us from a quick sprint race to the top) and down through Aldbury Nowers. Everything was so lush it was so nice to be outside.
I took my new trekking poles with me. Last week the nice people at Trespass emailed to ask if there was anything I needed for my upcoming Kilimanjaro trek. I’ve been hesitant to buy some poles as I hate how heavy they are, but can’t afford (or afford to break!) the super light ones I really want. These are a nice middle ground pole and I think will do the job for 5 days up Kilimanjaro.
I felt like a bit of a n00b with them on the walk on Saturday (clearly as I didn’t even get a photo with them!) on such an easy trail, but it’s all good practice for the big event.
2 hours and 6 miles later we were back near the Tring station ready to hit up a pub for much needed food & drinks. This is where our planning went wrong. Tring station is no where near Tring. It would be another 30 minutes walk down a horrible busy road to even find a pub. We should have done the walk clockwise and stopped in Aldbury for our drinking needs, but didn’t realise that until we were done. It was sad times on the train back home eating the last of our jelly babies and nutrigrain bars, but we survived the hardship. Thank you for your thoughts.
I highly recommend the Ashbridge Drovers Long Walk (~6 miles) for a day out. I’d love to come back and run it, maybe including the little 2 mile detour up to Ivinghoe beacon too.
lifelauralondon 
Ah, this sounds brilliant! I often run around the Ridgeway in that area and it’s so beautiful. I live in Tring and the distance of the station from town continues to disappoint me. I’ve never done one of the planned routes so I need to check this out. My tips if you head there again: there’s some nice routes of different lengths that start from the Ashridge Estate and in summer they have a BBQ going at the visitor centre, plus some good scones. Berkhamsted is 5 mins on the train from Tring (back towards London) and there’s some great pubs near the station, including the Rising Sun for some awesome ciders. Anyway, enough fangirling about Hertfordshire, great to hear about your walk and good luck for all your trekking prep!
That’s so funny, we got on the train and were moping about and as we pulled away from Berkhamstead we were both like “GAH! We should have got off there!” Next time 😉
Berkhamsted is my neck of the woods! Going to do a bit more fangirling – I 100% advocate the scones at the Brownlow by the monument – they are HUGE! This route includes a lot of my fave running places – the Beacon & Pitstone Hill are pretty good challenges (i.e. never put it in the middle of a 18 miler)
Glad you enjoyed it and had good weather- If you ever want to race around here, Tring Running Club do an awesome Ridgeway race around October time that’s about 15k….
Ah! That sounds like an awesome run! Will keep an eye out for it – would love to do more running out there you guys are so luck to have it on your doorstep!