Solo Training Walk (28km Stockley Park to High Wycombe .... The Long Walk Home)

To celebrate walk to work week and in a burst of contrary madness Howard decides to walk the 17.5 miles home. The weather looks decent and all meetings from 4pm have been cancelled ..... what could possibly go wrong?

The first stretch is probably the best, along the canal towpath to Uxbridge. I leave The Water's Edge, The Malt Shovel and The General Elliott behind, and I pass under the Oxford Road with just over an hour gone. I had planned to take in a swifty at The Swan & Bottle, but I push on towards Denham.

A bit further on there's a dodgy transaction going on between two schoolkids involving a bag of maggots and what looks like a Panini sticker album but might be the 21st century equivalent of "What The Butler Saw" ("What The Butler Recorded On His WebCam And Uploaded To The Internet").

By the time I get to Denham the air is filled with mayflies, but there's a surly darkness to the sky. Despite turning the map round several times I end up taking the wrong path, but after zigzagging dangerously across the firing line of the golf course I get back on track and end up outside The Fat Cow. After peering in through the window I figure it isn't "my kind of place", although I'm sufficiently thirsty that I'm willing to let my standards slip a bit. Just at that moment I'm nearly flattened by a 4 x 4 Merc driven by a woman whose fake tan would probably set off the smoke alarm. My inverted snobbery gene kicks in and I decide to take my chances further down the road.

The new pedestrian crossing over the A40 hasn't been finished yet, so Howard plays his own game of Frogger and just about manages to avoid being hooshed into the gutter by the bus he would have caught if he hadn't been walking home. Ah the irony.

Instead of heading alongside the A40 there's a footpath marked between the BP garage and the bottom of "the land that time forgot" lane. In fact there are two sections to this footpath, the first one requiring a machete-wielding battalion of Chindits and the second one being navigable only by coracle. The houses up "the land that time forgot" lane are a curious mixture of city traders' bolt-holes and farmhouses with quad bikes, rusty burned-out cars and getorrfmahhhlaaaannnnnnd attitude out front. Nothing even vaguely resembling livestock or crops, although there is a horse and some asbestos sheeting. The pace picks up from here and by the time I get to to the pile of rubble that was The French Horn a 9pm finish is back on the cards. Opposite The French Horn is The Apple Tree (Country Pub & Eating). Wild horses, etc. ....

Country Pub & Eating ... gosh is that the time?

It's now just a case of a straight walk along the A40. At one point I'm accosted by a bloke in a high viz jacket. Turns out they're filming a Sleeping Beauty remake in Bulstrode Park and anyone using the public footpath here is clearly trying to break in to steal a pair of Angelina Jolie's pants.

Beaconsfield offers more overpriced gastrononsense pubs, but at least you can buy hats, oil paints and proper musical instruments here. I'm tempted by the banjo, but time is pressing and the sun is fighting a losing battle with the horizon. At the bottom of the big hill coming into Loudwater I'm buoyed by news of a black pudding Scotch egg acquisition in time for the cricket on Thursday. So excited, I miss the turnoff for The Dereham's Inn, but end up at home to crack open a bottle of Clouded Yellow.

A touch under 4¾ hours for 17½ miles is OK, but I'm more than 25% tired.