It’s no an excellent tutting, such chocolate stores commonly geared towards you, none will they be occupying equipment that’d feel selling something that you have been looking for often. But you have to question as to the reasons exactly what was once by far the most prestigious shopping street in the nation is infested with tacky retailers fleecing visitors with unlabelled shelves regarding foreign confectionery. Valuable? Unfortuitously sure.

Weekend,

Gerrards Get across is a good commuter town within the southern Buckinghamshire, whether or not history go out I ran it absolutely was good commuter community inside South Bucks, and that simply proves simply how much can take place for the half a dozen decades. It is conveniently wedged involving the M40 plus the M25, easily connected with Marylebone by the instruct and often passes lists from Most desirable Places Getting Broadsheet Clients To reside. Before the rail showed up truth be told there was not much right here, simply a beneficial hamlet around the common and a few households to the this new Oxford Roadway, but once 1906 appeared a beneficial sprawl away from private houses locations lined up on London’s higher-middle-income group.

The jewel of Gerrards Cross is the Common, a 60 acre triangle that early property developers sensibly left alone. Wander down the high street and a grassy fringe suddenly opens up, then beyond that a deep expanse of thick beechy woodland. This is criss-crossed by desire line footpaths that over the years have become well-trodden tracks, so is never especially wild but ideal for a good long dog-walk. Stumble the right way and you might find a small pond, but more likely Jasper on his bike or Lady on her lead. I stumbled out by the Lutyens war memorial. An incredibly GX vision: The owners of several convertibles absolutely loving getting the opportunity to drive round with their tops down in March.

Sir Edwin Lutyens designed 40 war memorials, the most famous of which is the Cenotaph, but only here in Gerrards Cross did his structure have a dual purpose. The vicar donated his stable block and Lutyens duly transformed it into a community centre for the new village, fronted by a pillared portico where the names of the local dead are inscribed and wreaths are laid. Today the building houses the offices of the local branch of the Royal British Legion and/or a gym, it was hard to tell, and the surrounding buildings form the town’s social hub. Today they’re putting on eco-puppetry for children, whereas yesterday an arch of Friesian-coloured balloons welcomed little princesses bearing gifts to Riya’s farm-based birthday party. A very GX vision: The party caterers firing up their burger grill in the back of a horsebox.

This being Gerrards Cross the newest go camping keeps after that come encircled into most of the edges by individual property, thus should be a little new feature for in the bottom of your lawn

Stumble off the common another way and you’re met by the fine sight of the Church of St James with its panile tower. It was built by two sisters in 1859, long before it had a parish worth serving, in memory of their brother who died while serving as a non-local MP. Had you been here in 1969 you might have witnessed the wedding of Lulu to Maurice Gibb – somewhat of a drunken whirlwind I understand – or in 1972 the burial of screen great Margaret Rutherford. I found her pink granite headstone round the back, almost in pride of place, amid a whirl of primroses and daffodils. An extremely GX vision: A red kite circling in the sky, like it was the most normal bird to be flying above a Home Counties town.

Beyond the church is Buckinghamshire’s largest hillfort, Bulstrode Camp. It’s thought to have been built between 500BC and 50AD and consists of a double rampart earthwork surrounding a large oval space up to 300m in diameter (which thus far has delivered little of archaeological substance). The middle’s quite featureless (and mostly full of exercising dogs), while the encircling ditch proved much harder to walk round than I assumed it would be. An incredibly GX sight: A poster campaign decrying Network Rail’s proposal to replace the high level Edwardian footbridge because “half of the adult female population will not be able to see over the bridge parapets.”