Walk around Buckingham

11 January 2020

Walk with Ray, of just over four miles. We could have just driven to Buckingham, but instead took the train from Wolverton to Milton Keynes Central (only about a five minute journey) and then (after some cold standing around) took the Arriva X60 service from the station. On arrival we warmed up with tea at the Meadow Row Tea Rooms, and I had a piece of shortbread while Ray had a pasty.

One of the leaflets we picked up claims that Buckingham is located in the ‘Green Heart of England’ – I’m not sure if that’s a thing or just some romantic notion. As the name suggests, Buckingham was at one point the county town of Buckinghamshire, from the creation of the county in the 10th century to the early 18th century, when Buckingham’s fortunes slumped a bit - presumably not helped by the town centre burning down - and Aylesbury took over. See Dave’s recent piece on county towns.

Buckingham’s town centre is attractive in a cramped olde-worlde way (spending significant time in Milton Keynes tends to make other towns feel cramped). The High Street is dominated by the Old Gaol, built in the mid-eighteenth century and, as the name suggests, originally a prison but now housing, among other things, a tiny visitor information office, where we popped in and picked up a few leaflets.

The Old Gaol

We set out to do the Circular Walk, from an excellent little leaflet with some charming artwork:

Much of the walk follows the River Great Ouse, which was extremely full on the day of our walk though was at least running within its banks – the state of some of the paths and the grass suggested recent flooding. The route goes down Ford Street, which ends in a footbridge over the river. We assumed from the name that there was also a ford here at one point.

Possible former ford

The walk turns left just before the footbridge and passes through Chandos Park. The leaflet advised us that the Marquess of Chandos was one of the titles of the Duke of Buckingham and Chandos¹.

We crossed the river by Tanlaw Mill and followed the path down past The Flosh, a weir, and then up onto Station Road. Apparently The Flosh is supposed to look like this - there was far more water going over it on the day we saw it.

We turned left up Station Road to join the Railway Walk – this is only about 1.5km in length and runs between Tingewick Road and the A421, which bypasses Buckingham to the south. There’s no evidence now of the station buildings, as these were all demolished, but Ray did spot some evidence of a platform. There are some old pictures here including one of the station forecourt. Buckingham evidently used to be a stop on the Banbury to Verney Junction branch line. The line joined the (also former) Varsity Line at Verney Junction.

The railway walk

The Circular Walk turns left along the perimeter of some school playing fields before coming out onto London Road. We crossed and chose to follow the alternative route, via Badgers Way, to avoid getting too muddy.

After crossing the river at Bourton Park we decided to take a detour onto the Ouse Valley Way to try to locate the restored bit of the Buckingham Canal. The Buckingham Canal was in fact the Buckingham Arm of the Grand Union Canal, joining the latter at Cosgrove. The story of its fortunes is the usual canal story: it lost trade to the railway, then became silted up so boats stopped using it. There’s a Buckingham Canal Society working on rewatering as many bits of it as they can.

By the rewatered canal section at Bourton Meadow

We did successfully locate the rewatered Bourton Meadow section and walked along it as far as the watered section goes. The restored section ends at a house – possibly a former lock cottage – that’s at some point been extended over the course of the old canal. You can continue to follow the path of the old canal as the Ouse Valley Way follows it as far as Thornton, but rather than make a long detour we retraced our steps back and followed the path along the river back into the town centre, where we had lunch at the King's Head.

Our route shown in red below. The straggly bit in the upper right of the map is our detour to locate the canal:

¹  Sidebar: this family were possessors of a quintuple-barrelled surname (Temple-Nugent-Brydges-Chandos-Grenville). Phew. The dukedom became extinct when the 3rd Duke died in 1889 sans male issue (though he did have three daughters, the eldest of whom was able to inherit one of her father’s subsidiary titles, the lordship of Kinloss, which could apparently be held by females. Who knows how these things work.).