CHILTERNS & THAMES VALLEY | Bradt travel guide

travel guide

Part of Bradt’s distinctive, award-winning series of ‘Slow’ travel guides to UK regions, the new, thoroughly updated second edition of The Chilterns and the Thames Valley (Slow Travel) celebrates this charming, popular English region close to London. Written with intimate detail and insider tips by two locals, it is the only guidebook to provide in-depth coverage of this region, which is shared between the counties of Bedfordshire, Berkshire, Buckinghamshire, Hertfordshire and Oxfordshire. Divided into six user-friendly sections, Bradt’s The Chilterns and Thames Valley lifts the lid on what makes this area so distinctive.

Chalk grasslands, beech woods, streams, one of the world’s most famous rivers and wooded valleys provide perfect landscapes for walking – and are easily accessible from London. About half of the region has been designated as a ‘National Landscape’ – the closest such designation to London, and justifying this edition’s inclusion of several new walking routes. Rare plants such as fleawort and various orchids, and birds including red kite, lapwing and skylark flourish.

Millions of people know the Chilterns via TV and films, as world-famous studios have created murder, mayhem, historical drama and horror here; this is Midsomer Murders country. In the Chilterns you find key sites of monarchical and parliamentary power such as Windsor Castle and Chequers, and the location of Magna Carta’s sealing (Runnymede). Many well-loved authors have lived and written here, depicting Paradise, defining our childhoods and painting timeless images of England and its people. Eminent chefs own restaurants with national, even international, reputations: the village of Bray alone hosts two of Britain’s eight triple-Michelin-starred restaurants.

The Chilterns and the Thames Valley (together with the Vale of Aylesbury) represent a wonderfully paradoxical mixture of world-famous tourist sites and lesser-known attractions full of quirkiness and character, which will repay the visitor’s interest and attention many times over. From Windsor Castle to Whipsnade Zoo, Britain’s oldest road (The Ridgeway) to National Trust properties such as Cliveden and Waddesdon, the Henley Regatta to the Grand Union Canal, Bradt’s The Chilterns and the Thames Valley (Slow Travel) is your perfect travelling companion to this enchanting area.