From the station car park cross the road. To visit Bletchley Park (paid entry), turn right – the entrance is 300yds (274m) further along Sherwood Drive. After the visit retrace your steps towards the station and turn right onto the footpath opposite. This brings you into Wilton Avenue. Turn left along here, then left into Church Green Road. Bear left at the junction with Buckingham Road. Turn right into Water Eaton Road, pass beneath a high-level bridge, then bear right at the footpath sign, just before the next bridge.
Pass a pond belonging to an Angling Club on the right, and follow the fenced path to a disused stile. Continue to a fork, keep right and follow the track right (anti-clockwise) round the edge of the lake. Go down one set of steps, up and down another, avoid a third set, then as you leave the lake behind, cross the two sets of steps and a footbridge on the right. Turn left immediately beyond these and keep green railings to your right. Eventually bear left at a grassy track and follow it to a metal gate and stile. Turn right immediately in front of these. Swing left, then right, and continue straight ahead with the railway line left.
Pass through trees, and alongside a waste recycling plant and a building site. Eventually you will have to leave the path as it is blocked by building materials. Walk along the road, bear left, cross the railway bridge and turn immediately right at yellow posts.
Follow the path for a short distance, then turn left at a waymarker. Continue, with houses on your left. On reaching the road, cross it between two roundabouts, cross the canal bridge, and swing left to follow tree-lined Broad Walk, parallel to the tow path.
Continue ahead, to fork right at the Riverside Walk sign, then swing left after about 75yds (69m). Fork right to keep following the river. When you are level with Eaton Leys Farm on the right, cross a footbridge over a pond and turn left. Pass Mill Farm (left) and the car park to Waterhall Park (right). Just before the humpback bridge, turn right onto the Grand Union Canal tow path.
Continue ahead, and eventually pass a lift bridge and small private marina and leave the tow path. Turn left across the canal bridge, pass the Bridge Inn (now closed), and the Swan Hotel. Turn left into Aylesbury Street, past the church on the corner and walk through Fenny Stratford past The Maltsters and The Bull and Butcher pubs. At the mini-roundabout turn right into Vicarage Road.
Continue straight on over a roundabout into Queensway which eventually heads into the main shopping area, pedestrianised Elizabeth Square. Pass to the right of the Brunel Shopping Centre, go left up a ramp, pass beneath the railway line, turn right at the police station into Sherwood Drive and return to the station.
The importance of what took place at Bletchley Park during World War II cannot be overstated. This was the home of Station X – where, at its height, some 10,000 people worked in total secrecy in a small, nondescript town at the heart of the English shires to infiltrate the most important secrets of... Germany’s war machine. Brain teasers Why Bletchley? Midway between the keenest brains of the universities of Oxford and Cambridge, and just a few minutes’ walk from a mainline railway station with regular services to London, this country estate seemed a perfect venue for the Government Code and Cypher School. As the threat of war loomed, Bletchley Park geared up to become the key communications centre in the history of modern warfare. In August 1939, code breakers arrived at Bletchley Park in numbers. So as not to arouse suspicion in the area, they posed as members of ‘Captain Ridley’s shooting party’. Ridley was the man in charge of the school’s move to Bletchley. Once here mathematicians, linguists, crossword enthusiasts and Oxbridge boffins plotted ceaselessly – in the main grand house, in wooden huts and in brick-built blocks, many of which still stand today. Their role was to study the German military cipher machine, ‘Enigma’, and devise a programme to enable the Allies to decode the Nazis’ secret messages. The odds against anyone who did not know the settings being able to break Enigma were a staggering 159 million million million to one. But the team at Bletchley Park did break Enigma, and as a result shortened the war against Germany by as much as two years, thus saving countless lives. Perhaps the key figure in the story of Bletchley Park was Alan Turing, a mathematical genius considered to be one of the pioneering fathers of the modern computer. Turing and Gordon Welchman designed the British ‘Bombe’, an electro-mechanical machine of clattering code wheels. This ran through all the possible Enigma wheel configurations, in order to reduce the possible number of settings in use to a manageable number for further hand-testing. Communications between Hitler in Berlin and his army commanders in the field were 'cracked', and among Bletchley’s most notable and tangible direct successes were tracking U-Boat packs in the Atlantic;the North Africa Campaign, when they enabled the Royal Navy to cut Rommel's supply lines and kept Montgomery informed of the enemy’s every move; and D-Day, which allowed the British to confuse Hitler over where the Allies were to land. The Germans never realised Enigma had been broken, and indeed, until the mid-1970s no one outside Bletchley Park knew exactly what went on here. Today it is the subject of television programmes and films, with the latest movie, The Imitation Game, released in 2014 starring Benedict Cumberbatch (as Alan Turing) and Keira Knightley.
Buckinghamshire is a land of glorious beech trees, wide views and imposing country houses, such as Stowe and Waddesdon Manor, set amid sumptuous gardens and dignified parkland. The Vale of Aylesbury is a vast playground for leisure seekers, and rising above it are the Chiltern Hills, a designated Area of Outstanding Natural Beauty where you can also find the woodland rides of Burnham Beeches.
From the station car park cross the road. To visit Bletchley Park (paid entry), turn right – the entrance is 300yds (274m) further along Sherwood Drive. After the visit retrace your steps towards the station and turn right onto the footpath opposite. This brings you into Wilton Avenue. Turn left along here, then left into Church Green Road. Bear left at the junction with Buckingham Road. Turn right into Water Eaton Road, pass beneath a high-level bridge, then bear right at the footpath sign, just before the next bridge.
1 of 7
Pass a pond belonging to an Angling Club on the right, and follow the fenced path to a disused stile. Continue to a fork, keep right and follow the track right (anti-clockwise) round the edge of the lake. Go down one set of steps, up and down another, avoid a third set, then as you leave the lake behind, cross the two sets of steps and a footbridge on the right. Turn left immediately beyond these and keep green railings to your right. Eventually bear left at a grassy track and follow it to a metal gate and stile. Turn right immediately in front of these. Swing left, then right, and continue straight ahead with the railway line left.
2 of 7
Pass through trees, and alongside a waste recycling plant and a building site. Eventually you will have to leave the path as it is blocked by building materials. Walk along the road, bear left, cross the railway bridge and turn immediately right at yellow posts.
3 of 7
Follow the path for a short distance, then turn left at a waymarker. Continue, with houses on your left. On reaching the road, cross it between two roundabouts, cross the canal bridge, and swing left to follow tree-lined Broad Walk, parallel to the tow path.
4 of 7
Continue ahead, to fork right at the Riverside Walk sign, then swing left after about 75yds (69m). Fork right to keep following the river. When you are level with Eaton Leys Farm on the right, cross a footbridge over a pond and turn left. Pass Mill Farm (left) and the car park to Waterhall Park (right). Just before the humpback bridge, turn right onto the Grand Union Canal tow path.
5 of 7
Continue ahead, and eventually pass a lift bridge and small private marina and leave the tow path. Turn left across the canal bridge, pass the Bridge Inn (now closed), and the Swan Hotel. Turn left into Aylesbury Street, past the church on the corner and walk through Fenny Stratford past The Maltsters and The Bull and Butcher pubs. At the mini-roundabout turn right into Vicarage Road.
6 of 7
Continue straight on over a roundabout into Queensway which eventually heads into the main shopping area, pedestrianised Elizabeth Square. Pass to the right of the Brunel Shopping Centre, go left up a ramp, pass beneath the railway line, turn right at the police station into Sherwood Drive and return to the station.
The importance of what took place at Bletchley Park during World War II cannot be overstated. This was the home of Station X – where, at its height, some 10,000 people worked in total secrecy in a small, nondescript town at the heart of the English shires to infiltrate the most important secrets of... Germany’s war machine. Brain teasers Why Bletchley? Midway between the keenest brains of the universities of Oxford and Cambridge, and just a few minutes’ walk from a mainline railway station with regular services to London, this country estate seemed a perfect venue for the Government Code and Cypher School. As the threat of war loomed, Bletchley Park geared up to become the key communications centre in the history of modern warfare. In August 1939, code breakers arrived at Bletchley Park in numbers. So as not to arouse suspicion in the area, they posed as members of ‘Captain Ridley’s shooting party’. Ridley was the man in charge of the school’s move to Bletchley. Once here mathematicians, linguists, crossword enthusiasts and Oxbridge boffins plotted ceaselessly – in the main grand house, in wooden huts and in brick-built blocks, many of which still stand today. Their role was to study the German military cipher machine, ‘Enigma’, and devise a programme to enable the Allies to decode the Nazis’ secret messages. The odds against anyone who did not know the settings being able to break Enigma were a staggering 159 million million million to one. But the team at Bletchley Park did break Enigma, and as a result shortened the war against Germany by as much as two years, thus saving countless lives. Perhaps the key figure in the story of Bletchley Park was Alan Turing, a mathematical genius considered to be one of the pioneering fathers of the modern computer. Turing and Gordon Welchman designed the British ‘Bombe’, an electro-mechanical machine of clattering code wheels. This ran through all the possible Enigma wheel configurations, in order to reduce the possible number of settings in use to a manageable number for further hand-testing. Communications between Hitler in Berlin and his army commanders in the field were 'cracked', and among Bletchley’s most notable and tangible direct successes were tracking U-Boat packs in the Atlantic;the North Africa Campaign, when they enabled the Royal Navy to cut Rommel's supply lines and kept Montgomery informed of the enemy’s every move; and D-Day, which allowed the British to confuse Hitler over where the Allies were to land. The Germans never realised Enigma had been broken, and indeed, until the mid-1970s no one outside Bletchley Park knew exactly what went on here. Today it is the subject of television programmes and films, with the latest movie, The Imitation Game, released in 2014 starring Benedict Cumberbatch (as Alan Turing) and Keira Knightley.
Buckinghamshire is a land of glorious beech trees, wide views and imposing country houses, such as Stowe and Waddesdon Manor, set amid sumptuous gardens and dignified parkland. The Vale of Aylesbury is a vast playground for leisure seekers, and rising above it are the Chiltern Hills, a designated Area of Outstanding Natural Beauty where you can also find the woodland rides of Burnham Beeches.
