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Start & Parking: Frogmore Street East car park (behind Dolphin Square and the Church of St Peter & St Paul) Grid ref. SP 923 115
(S/E) From the car park, walk up towards the church of St Peter and St Paul (it’s worth a look inside!).
(1) Take the cobbled path at the rear of the church, to pass the Tring Parish Hall on your left. Cross a minor road to go through a small archway (not the larger arch into Sutton Court to your left). Carry straight ahead into the bottom of the Forge car park, and slightly downhill to exit the car park through ‘Tring Market Place’ and onto Brook Street (with the Tring Local History Museum on your right – currently open on Fridays and Saturdays only).
(2) Turn right and cross Brook Street then walk up Mortimer Hill. Continue up, passing Tring School on the left, to Chiltern Way.
(3) Follow this road round to the right, but when it turns again to the left, enter the little cul-de-sac straight ahead. Cross a small green to another cul-de-sac (Sulgrave Screscent), then cross to a fenced path on the right. This takes you through to a large tree on Grove Road.
(4) Bear right across the road, and turn almost immediately left into Marshcroft Lane. Continue up Marshcroft Lane for about a half mile, to an obvious bridge over the Grand Union Canal.
(5) Just before the bridge take the signed footpath up to the right. Follow the hedgeline along the field. With the canal below you to your left, follow the same path for nearly a mile along the edge of three fields. Eventually, the path turns left towards the canal, to reach Station Road (beside a house). Turn left onto the road.
(6) After 200m, cross the road and turn right into Beggars Lane (to your left is the roadbridge over the canal.) After 150m, take the signed footpath to the right, and join the Ridgeway National Trail. Follow the fenced path (middle, to the left) up the hill. As you climb, look back to views across to the Ashridge Forest and the Bridgewater Monument. You’ll probably also spot Blue Jays – common in this area. Eventually, the path crosses the ‘old’ A41 – cross to the opposite pavement.
(7) After 75m continue on the Ridgeway path to the left. After a short distance, the path crosses the A41 by-pass at a lofty height on the bridge known locally as ‘the Gateway to Tring’. Continue to a road – ‘The Twist’ – bear right, cross the road, and then almost immediately left to continue on the Ridgeway path.
(8) With views to the right over Tring and the Vale of Aylesbury (spot Mentmore Towers on the horizon), pass an Ordnance Survey triangulation point to cross another road – Oddy Hill – and follow the Ridgeway path opposite (from here you could visit Wigginton and its Greyhound pub), to a gate past a terrace of cottages.
(9) Continue through the gate – you’re now entering Tring Park. Continue to a junction of paths. Here you leave the Ridgeway (which turns sharply to the left), and take the centre path quite steeply downhill. Cross a broader path, and then another, in your descent (this path can be muddy and slippery in wet weather, but an alternative gentler descent is reasonably obvious, via the ‘Obelisk’ – see a local map of the Park).
(10) Bear right through a gate to cross the lower level of Tring Park, to an obvious pedestrian bridge straight ahead, which will take you across the busy A41. As you cross the bridge, look up right, through the ‘Avenue of Lime Trees’, planted in the time of the Rothschilds. You will see their erstwhile Mansion ahead, as you descend the other side.
(11) Continue on this fenced path to a road (close to the Natural History Museum – another place well worth a visit), but cross and take the path opposite, slightly to the right, which takes you into town via ‘Bank Alley’. It’s something of a surprise to eventually emerge into the busy Hight Street!
(12) Cross to the Dolphin Square shopping precinct and walk through to the car park, and journey’s end! (S/E)
