Excursion to Ashridge Estate '20

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We can’t remember the last time we visited Ashridge Estate, northwest outskirts of London. We decided to do trekking course on 23 October 2020.



We took the train from Euston for Tring. We saw rain falling, wet platforms from the window on the way to the destination. As we left Tring station, we crossed over the road to start the trekking course. There were signposts for Aldbury, Bridgewater Tower, and Ivinghoe. In contrast to the weather forecast I’d heard from the previous day, the thick clouds came round Ashridge in the lunchtime and it started raining while walking towards Aldbury village. Mark put up umbrella and I put up my scarf on my head. Nevertheless, the sight was quite clear, and while approaching Aldbury, we could see the lush hills with autumnal coloured leaves and Bridgewater Tower.



The 1^st part of the trekking course ended with the pasture land with beef cattle. Several big cattle were there and greeted us. We remembered picturesque houses of Aldbury village – some of which were fake Tudor wooden houses – surrounded by lovely countryside.



By the time we started uphill trekking course, the weather improved and it offered us breathtaking views of the lush countryside with gold, orange, red and yellow coloured leaves and a wide variety of trees and shrubs.



Despite the pandemic, there were quite a few people visiting Ashridge Estate, which has been under the care of National Trust. The café and the gift shop were open, but the café didn’t offer the table service – only takeaway services. We had brought our leisure sheet and picnic lunch and sat on one of the big fallen trees which were used for picnickers’ bench.



Mark had printed maps of walking courses around Ashridge Estate and suggested we would do a 3 mile circular Ranger’s Walk. This trekking course offered us a series of dynamic landscapes created by varied history and diverse habitat of wildlife and a huge variety of shrubs and trees. We saw a number of ancient trees’ trunks with varied fungi. It became sunnier and warmer while we were walking across the open space between woodlands – we could see there were a wide variety of trees, conifers and shrubs growing and these colourful autumnal leaves looked even more enchanting under the blue sky. As well as leaves, chestnuts continued falling – we saw a myriad of chestnuts on the foot and some squirrels running with chestnuts.



We came back to the centre of Estate just after 3.30 – there were still a lot of people there. We used the same route on the way back to the station. While walking down, we saw two of fallow deer coming out from the bushes on the right hand – one was crossing over the footpath to the other side, but one seemed to be shy away from us and hiding away the bushes on the right hand – they were only 200 metres away from us.



We walked 5-6 miles altogether. These trekking courses contained a number of up- and down-hills and it was very muddy. Our shoes got very muddy afterwards and we both had to clean our shoes in the evening.

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Comments

[Mary Goddard]

Felt I was there
Having read your description of your time at the Ashridge Estate , it was so good that I felt I was there .