Walk Description:

Long: 5m (8km) Short: 2 1/2m (4km)

Start / Finish: The Full Moon, Hawridge Common, Nr Chesham

Walk Time: Long: allow 2½ hours Short: allow 1¼ hours Access Information: Both walks follow paths with uneven surfaces and several stiles.

How to get to the start

By train: Take the Metropolitan Line to Chesham where there is a very limited bus service to Cholesbury.

By car: Cholesbury is situated 2 miles south of Tring and 2 miles north of Chesham. The Full Moon is opposite Hawridge and Cholesbury Commons.

The Iron Age Fort Walk

This is one of a series of walks through the Chilterns Area of Outstanding Natural Beauty (AONB). It follows rights of way most of which are waymarked as follows: Footpath (walkers only), Bridleway (horse riders, cyclists and walkers) Please be considerate in the countryside – keep to footpaths, especially through crops, and leave farm gates as you find them. Beware of traffic when using or crossing country roads. Byway open to all traffic

Refreshments 

The Full Moon Pub The Full Moon serves food Monday to Friday 12-2pm and walkers, cyclists and horse riders are welcome and there is a large garden with a view of the windmill and the common. Call 01494 758959 for reservations.

Notes on the walk

Anti-clockwise from The Full Moon, both walks start opposite the driveway to this 17th century pub.

For the short route, turn half left downhill across the common to the trees. For the long route take the sign-posted public footpath straight across the common downhill to the valley bottom.

Turn right and almost immediately left to cross a stile and make your way uphill with the hedge on your left towards Tring Grange Farm.

Cholesbury is an ancient hill top village situated in the Chiltern Hills, which are officially designated as an Area of Outstanding Natural Beauty.

It has much to interest the visitor, especially the Iron Age Hill Fort, one of the most impressive prehistoric settlements in the Chilterns.

The fort can be reached from the shorter of the two walks shown here.

It was probably constructed in the Middle Iron Age (300 – 100 BC) and occupied, perhaps intermittently, from the Roman Conquest in the mid-First Century A D.

The area is criss-crossed with footpaths and bridleways and additional routes for riders have recently been created across the common land. It is rich in wildlife, including fox, badger and muntjac deer; birds including pheasant, woodpecker, and barn owl; butterflies include marbled white, orange tip, and meadow brown. The beechwoods, bluebells and orchids all add to the great diversity of life to be found here.

Grim’s Ditch is an ancient earthwork of uncertain origin, although probably pre-Saxon, along which runs The Chiltern Way – a 134-mile circular walking route of the Chilterns.

Cholesbury Camp.

The Fort consists of a large ditch with ramparts crowned by beech trees. It covers an area of 10 acres, within which is situated the Holy Pond and St Laurence Church. The Church is one of two in the county to be found inside a hill fort. The original Norman church, having fallen into disrepair, was rebuilt sympathetically in 1872.

This walk is courtesy of the Chilterns Conservation Board. For more, visit www.chilternsaonb.org