The Chilterns part 1: Coombe Hill

Phew, lost the ability to transfer photos from my camera for a bit there, but now we're back on track!

The next few posts will be featuring a glamourous guest star, the country of the United Kingdom! They stem from my month long christmas trip to the country of my birth. I figured I spend so long giving Austria free advertising and picking only the nicest pictures of it for publication, I owe the british countryside the same favour!

This gallery of images is taken from the top of Coombe Hill. A 260m hill (that's big for southern england!) it occupies an imposing position overlooking the low lying Vale of Aylesbury, and as such boasts views far in excess of its small stature. The views are aided by the fact that Coombe hill is mostly chalk downland, close cropped grass maintained by grazing animals. This is an excellent example of one of the 'unnatural' natural environments 1000s of years of farming have created in Britain and indeed many parts of the world.

The Chilterns are a long range of resistant chalk hills situated NW-ish of London. Steep, grassy hillsides criss-crossed with sheep tracks and dotted with gorse and newly invading patches of trees are characteristic of the part of the world I grew up in. The soil on chalk is always thin, and there is always the odd creamy white patch of exposed chalk at a severley eroded area or under a newly fallen tree. Once on top of the chalk the scenery is less dramatic and more rolling, and a glimpse of the farmland away from the sharp scarp at the edge of the chalk will be seen in the next blog post, about a hike near my village.

Coombe Hill possesses a large monument to Buckinghamshire soldiers who died in the Boer war at the turn of the 20th century (not the empire's finest hour, to put it mildly), and according to wikipedia represents one of the earlier war memorials in the UK to actually be about the individual fallen soldiers rather than celebrating some great battle or general.

In fact, Coombe Hill is actually a rather odd name, Coombe supposedly meaning 'hollow' or 'valley' in the language of celtic Britain.

It is nice to showcase some photos of Coombe Hill, the destination for many many childhood walks, hikes, night hikes, kite flying expeditions, scout wide games and barbecues. I hope the British and non-British readers of the blog alike enjoy an insight into the scenery of the Chiltern hills!

Here's the full gallery

Der Tom