Chequers Walk – Northern Chilterns: 7th May 2025
Had a lovely day out walking in the Northern Chilterns with P and T on a beautiful sunny day.
It took us a while to navigate out of Wendover station and around the HS2 works that were taking place at the start of the route.
But we were soon in gorgeous woodland, with the sun turning the foliage into a luminous green.
And enjoying the end of the bluebell season:
We got great views at the top of Coombe Hill:
Where there’s also a monument commemorating the Boer War, which I knew naff all about, so I did some Googling, and discovered it wasn’t the proudest moment in British history. There’s a fair bit of context and pre-amble, but in the latter phases the British responded to the Boer’s guerrilla tactics with Lord Kitchener adopting tactics to:
‘… flush out guerrillas in a series of systematic drives, organised like a sporting shoot, with success defined in a weekly ‘bag’ of killed, captured and wounded, and to sweep the country bare of everything that could give sustenance to the guerrillas, including women and children … It was the clearance of civilians—uprooting a whole nation—that would come to dominate the last phase of the war.’
— Pakenham, The Boer War[23]: 493
The ’cleared’ civilians and fighters were put in tented concentration camps: 45 for Boers and 64 for black Africans. Over 46,000 black Africans and Boer women and children died in these camps, many of disease due to poor sanitary conditions.
These tactics rightly prompted a public outcry in Britain, and after the war there was the first war crimes trial in British military history, although only for a small handful of soldiers involved.
Interestingly, the war also brought to attention the poor state of public health in Britain, as up to 40% of recruits were unfit for military service due to conditions like rickets and other poverty-related illnesses.
After discovering the above I’m a bit less enamoured with the monument:
The walk took us past Chequers: country pile of British Prime ministers. The path had lots of unwelcoming signs about straying being a ‘serious organised crime’, so we kept our distance:
In P’s guidebook there’s a great story about when Boris Yeltsin visited John Major here in 1994:
After a series of lengthy meetings with the Russian premier, John Major suggested that they go for a walk to get some fresh air. And so the two world leaders, their wives and a large entourage of diplomats and security officers set out across the Buckinghamshire countryside.
Within a few hundred metres, however, it became apparent that the Russian president was not one of life’s great walkers, and he began to look decidedly grumpy as they climbed up to the brow of a hill. At the top, Major presented Yeltsin with three choices: walk back over the fields to Chequers – to which Yeltsin grunted; climb down the hill to the waiting cars and be driven back to the estate – another grunt; or walk on to the old-fashioned English pub, the Bernard Arms, in the village of Great Kimble.
At this final suggestion, Yeltsin perked up considerably, shouting gleefully, “Gins and tonic! Gins and tonic!” Arriving in Great Kimble, however, they found that the pub was shut. Yeltsin started hammering on the door, yelling, “Open up! This is the President of Russia!” To which the dry reply came from inside: “Oh yes? And I’m the Kaiser.”
When the pub was finally opened, Major ordered a pint, while Yeltsin asked for a bottle of vodka, only to be refused such a large measure by the nonplussed barman; a diplomatic incident was only avoided when the Russian president agreed to drink his vodka one glass at a time like everyone else.
And another quick Google turned up this great footage of a pretty unhappy Yeltsin wandering round the countryside (with entourage) in his shell-suit!
At Little Kimble we popped into All Saints Church, which has early 14th century wall paintings that are pretty well preserved:
After that, it was a short walk back to Wendover for a couple of pints before heading home.