Amersham; Saturday, 24 June, 2023

I had a relatively early breakfast, mostly because the person in the room above was up at the crack of dawn and the old wooden floorboards made quite a lot of noise with even the slightest movement.

After breakfast I had a quick wander round town to take in the Kings Chapel, though that was closed due to a wedding taking place – which appears to be the main industry in Old Amersham – the number of wedding parties in town, for the size of the place, was quite incredible.

My next stop of the day was the Chiltern Open Air Museum, located in Chalfont St Giles, which has no public transport links at all and is a good 2½ mile walk from the nearest station so I decided to try and get a cab, remembering how poorly that had gone in Buckingham just two weeks previously. Thankfully it appears that the cab companies in Amersham actually want to serve customers and a couple of minutes later I was in a taxi heading towards the museum.

The museum has a number of buildings that have been moved from different areas of the Chilterns – which cover quite a large area as there were some buildings from Bedfordshire and the Thames Valley, as well as a Tudor barn from Northolt, now in Greater London. They also had a recreated Iron Age round house from around 2000 years ago as well as one of the High Wycombe Furniture Factories that had been moved up here after the industry collapsed in the town.

I spent quite a long time looking round the site so I had a quick stop for lunch in the museum café before starting the walk along the Chiltern Way back to the tube station at Chorleywood.

The walk took just under the hour with a gradual uphill climb for the middle mile of it, followed by a very steep descent down into the valley where Chorleywood is located, and a steep climb up a long set of stairs to get up to the station high above the town – I was quite glad I’d done it in this direction though as the first half mile in the opposite direction would have been a painful slog up the hill.

I’d arrived at Chorleywood with about 15 minutes to spare before the next tube to Chesham, though that didn’t take account of the fact that there had been signalling problems back in central London and the train I was hoping to catch had been cancelled, so in the end I had to wait 45 minutes before the train arrived.

I caught the tube round to Chesham and had a look around the town, stopping off in a café for a late afternoon coffee, before heading over to the bus stop to catch the bus back down to Amersham and the hotel.

After freshening up in the hotel I headed back out again a little later and caught the bus back up the hill to the part of Amersham that was built with the arrival of the Metropolitan line to grab dinner up there as the hotel restaurant was closed for a wedding reception.

Dinner completed I had a little walk around Amersham on the Hill before hopping on the last bus of the night back down to the hotel and my bed.