Today’s walk started with another car ride, my second time in a vehicle since July 1^st. And it was my same driver from yesterday afternoon, so we were like old friends. Having already dispensed with politics, I tried a gambit and asked if he knew what the hawks were that hover above the fields. “Hawks?” he asked, as if I had queried about the handsaws hovering above the field. I thought that like Hamlet I knew a hawk from a handsaw, but perhaps I’d made a gaffe? “Yes, the big birds that ride the currents?” I ventured. “Oh, those are red kites.” And then my gambit paid off.

He told me a story that a sign in a nature preserve confirmed later in the day. Red kites used to be all over this area, but humans drove them to extinction hereabouts. He noted that medieval people thought they were evil. I don’t know about that part of his story being true… They were all gone by the end of the nineteenth century. Then in the 1980s, someone who knew the history and knew about red kites in one part of northern Wales and others in Spain decided to reintroduce them to the Chiltern Hills. Some were brought here and let loose. (His account had cross-breeding between Spanish and Welsh kites, though the sign doesn’t back that up.) They thrived, so much so that now people complain about them. They do eat roadkill, but they’re so quick-reflexed that they rarely get hit by cars. And they ride the thermals above the hills. And their tails, if you watch them, move in a funny way that looks, he said, like the tail is being remote controlled from the ground, in mechanical shifts from side to side and up and down to adjust to the wind and move them. That last bit very true from my observation. Turns out that since moving to this area some years ago, he’s become interested in birds. Not a bird watcher per se, he said, but if he sees something he doesn’t know, he looks it up.

After this interesting chat, he dropped me off at the Five Horseshoes, where I’d finished walking yesterday, and off I went. Starting on the high hills, I had lovely views, and a gradual descent into one of a string of valleys for the day, this one with the dramatically placed Stonor House. Dropped down into the little village near the house, then crossed into the Stonor Deer Park, which climbed up to the hillside above the house, offering a great view of what wealth and power look like when a single family owns an estate for eight centuries.

Noticed the chapel right next to the house and wondered at their religiousness, then read in my guide that they were Catholics, and had built a chapel so they could practice their faith when that became a challenge and even dangerous in England. I even stopped to watch a red kite above the hill. Only thing missing from Stonor Deer Park was deer. Oh well.

Then out through a military-style kissing gate, through a rhododendron hedge (hey, another plant I recognize!) and up some more to rise over the hill. So far in the day I’d seen a dog walker. Full stop.

From here on, though, the trail got busier. Not crowded, mind you. But because it’s Saturday, more people are out for weekend walks. Right after filming my shepherding ability to clear my path, I encountered the first of six or seven little groups of six teenagers, aged around fourteen or fifteen I’d say, coming in the other direction. They all had map packs hanging from their necks (which are plastic, and in which you can fold the map so that a square of map about 12 inches across is easy to simply flip up and consult without unfolding a map every time. I guessed after seeing the second group that a school has set them loose on the wilderness, breaking them up into groups of six. That gave me flashbacks to the anxiousness of group activities at that age, when getting picked for the right group, or finding a good partner, felt like life or death.

And let me just note that every single teen said hello or good morning as we crossed paths. One kid even asked where I was going today, and I told him Marlow, so surprised at his asking that I failed to reciprocate and ask where they were going. At a guess. I’d bet they are going to go to Stonor House and even take the tour, since they were headed that way and it was early in the day. The hellos got a bit comical after four or five of these groups, but never failed to charm me. Teenagers without smartphones? In nature? Looking at maps? And saying hello pleasantly to strangers? Come on, it’s charming.

The trail wound on, down and up and down, going through some fields and on short bits of tiny country roads (one lane wide), but mostly through forests. At this point, for only the second time in the trip so far, I got smart and broke out the walking poles for a steep descent. And once I had them out, I used them for the rest of the day until I got to the big town of Marlow at the end of my fourteen miles. They really do ease the burden on knees and on leg muscles.

I stopped in a small village with a shop, where many many people were doing their weekend day in the country. I stopped in a little shop (the little shop, I should say; the town had a pub and a shop and a garage.) and bought a little hand-sized onion and gruyere tart for lunch (sorry, Clif bar, you’ll stay in my pack until tomorrow) and a Diet Coke and ate on a bench in front of the church, watching people walking and driving and riding bicycles. Delicious, though it did give me onion-y burps for the afternoon.

Then off again, up a pretty serious hill that had me counting out paces and hearing my breath, but feeling strong. The next few hours are a pleasant blur. I got to high ground, crossed a few fields, and then spent most of the afternoon in a forest in a nature reserve. That’s where I got confirmation of my driver’s story about the red kites. I also got a new flower name to try to lock in my brain: gentian. See photos. I take a lot of photos of flowers, in part because I love playing with the setting on my camera for taking close-ups of flowers.

And the day wound on, with people on the trail but without packs, so probably out for a day hike or just a short walk. And my mind has now reached that calm walking place, where I can pass an hour and though I am thinking of things, I am not chewing at them like a dog worrying a bone. I’ve got three more days of walking until London. The one worry on my mind is tomorrow’s twenty-mile walk. Oof. But after that, the days’ walks are shorter (12 and 16 miles) and I’ll be out of the hills and into the lower country (I think this is right) approaching London. It may be less pretty (a moderate worry) and involve more road walking and walking in places with sidewalks and traffic and chain restaurants (a real worry) but then I remind myself that after plunging into London and seeing some theater and museums, and after being joined by my sister Tracy, we’ll be headed back out again, to the South Downs, for more walking.

I reached Marlow and walked along the “trail” which was really a sidewalk down a suburban-style street through a housing development, where I could see how each little dead-end was built as a group. A few blocks would all have the same cookie-cutter façade, then there’d be a change to a different façade for a few blocks. It was like watching the growth of the town unfold in reverse as I moved toward the center. Along the way I passed a local sports club, where I watched about thirty seconds of cricket, which I still find as incomprehensible as the rest of the world finds baseball. There are sticks in the field, and someone is throwing a ball at them but someone else has a bat? There’s hitting and running and fielding. That’s all I’ve got.

I arrived in town, which was mobbed with Saturday afternoon shoppers. My B&B is set outside town, so I was advised in my accommodation notes to eat dinner before calling my hosts to pick me up (the two miles from town to the B&B are on a road not safe for walking). So I killed some time walking up and down the high street, had a nice sandwich and a cider at a pub, and called for my ride. My hosts are a couple in their seventies, and this is definitely the B&B as extra bedroom experience. The room has just a hint of mothball smell, and I am surprised I wasn’t offered a hard candy from a glass dish. Still, it’s a nice room in which to lie in bed, finish Flaubert’s Parrot (very good), and relax. Tomorrow, twenty miles to walk, so I will try to get a good night’s sleep.