 Hello, thank you for joining me. Today is part three of our walk along the River Mistborn. Yesterday I walked from Great Missingdon to Amersham. I went to Amersham this morning. I came along the footpath along the valley to here to Bottom House Farm Lane where I thought we'd start part three. So the main Amersham road, the A413 is just up there. Here's the River Mistborn. The footpath runs just along there and then there's Carries on across the road. So what I'm going to do this morning is walk all the way down the valley towards Chalfonson Charles and on to Chalfonson Peter. So let's go and discover more of the River Mistborn. So I've now just come about a mile from Bottom House Farm Lane. See what that yellow post is? Came out in the footpath along now. It's a very pleasant walk along the valley but it wasn't actually by the river. The river was always a field or so away. I will be carrying on down there to Chalfonson Charles Village Centre about a quarter of a mile away now from the Village Centre. What I'm going to show you is firstly this building here. This is the old mill. This is Mill Lane in Chalfonson Charles. So that way it takes you up to the main A413. That way it takes you to other parts of the village and come round here there is a thord which this car has just driven through the thord. And it's quite funny what happens here because as you can see there's a hump in the road but every time a car comes through it forces a load of water over the hump so then you get a bit of a river going down here and there's actually you can't really see a lot of it but there's another course of the river flowing directly under us here. All you can really see is a brick wall. There is water in it and you can see the water that gets pushed over the bit of the hump from cars goes down there and into the second course but let's go have a look at the thord preferably while there's no cars about because it's going to be a little bit challenging getting across because every time a car comes along this whole area effectively becomes the river but while there's no one about I can walk on this without getting my feet wet so I'm just going to have to wait here some runners coming over the bridge if a car comes now well they'll have to wait a minute so we're now going to go over the bridge this way it is a bit of a trying to sort of you've got to walk and not get your feet wet and exercised but here's the thord possibly as far as I'm well I think this is the only public thord on the river Mistborn there might be one or two on private roads and on farm tracks but I think this is the only one while as we go along I'll probably answer my own question so yeah then the river trickles off down there towards Chatham St Giles which as I said is about a quarter mile that way I'm now going to go back across the thord or across the bridge beside the thord rather and continue down the footpath towards Chatham St Giles Village Centre so I've walked along the footpath from Mill Lane and now we are coming to the village centre of Chatham St Giles this is probably one of Buckinghamshire's most attractive villages it really is a very beautiful little village and the river flows over there we're going to have a look at that in a minute but I'm just going to let you see the village centre now if you look here this view you see looking up there that is where they filmed the 1971 film Dad's Army so that was Warmington on Sea and this building here what is now a Costa Coffee was Captain Manorings Bank it was more recently it was a pub so I've been in there I've had a beer in there I've also had a coffee in there last year never withdraw money from there and I probably never will what I'm going to do now I'm going to head away from the river Mistborn because there's something else just up there I'd like to show you so I'm just walking up the hill now a little way from the village centre and this is what I wanted to show you here this little cottage this one on the end this is Milton's cottage this was the home of the poet John Milton you can go and visit it it's not open today but you go in you can have a look around hear about John Milton's life and you can also have a look around the quite attractive cottage garden so if you're in Charleston charge you can go for a nice walk in the Mistborn Valley and come visit Milton's cottage I'm going to go back that way now down to the village centre and we're going to reunite with the River Mistborn so I've come back down to Charleston Charles village green and just beside me here is the village pond which is connected to the River Mistborn so what we're going to do now is we're going to walk around the pond we'll rejoin the River Mistborn and we shall follow it all the way through to Charleston Peter and on to Denham so let you see one last view of the beautiful village green of Charleston Charles and just behind us here is River Mistborn so this is really quite a nice little area just outside the village centre where the river flows this all becomes meadows beyond here and it's like this kind of all the way to Charleston Peter really so I'm going to follow the river and we'll keep going well now it effectively it runs behind the village so you see the road there up that way goes up to where the A413 is so the A413 which has those trees up there there's it's not quite connected at the moment but see the pond and the river a couple of weeks ago when the river was higher the water was flowing right across so it shows over the last few weeks with the hot weather the river level has gone down and like I said in part one and two being a chalk stream it is a natural thing that the river levels well on most rivers the river level goes up and down but even more so with this one being a chalk stream and it can of course the river too dry up in the summer and it sometimes stays dried up all through the winter and you know on into the next year so but it's really nice to see it's flowing now we are still running parallel there's quite a lot of trees and bushes so I appreciate you can't see it we shout out just up here in a minute we will be behind the parish church so this section is quite nice look we come onto a boardwalk so when the flow is even is higher this area sometimes floods that's why they've put a boardwalk along here so um yeah that that always think a boardwalk makes the walk a bit more interesting so we're just going to carry on along here and uh you can see the parish church is well you will see it I promise where are we there we are there's the parish church of chaffinson gels that's another really pleasant church to visit so you know if you are here out for a walk I do suggest um you know go and visit the parish church have a look around the village it's all really worth seeing we come up to here we effectively go back onto a boardwalk again and um here's the river right here and then so you can see the river that's where we've just come along there's a footpath here which would take us beside the church yard that goes back towards the village center what I'm going to do now is I'm going to go back across the river this way and we're going to carry on along towards chaffinson peter so I'm going to follow this path up here in a moment there's a path that goes in that direction and that'll take me the next couple of miles on towards chaffinson peter so I'll show you more a little bit further up the river I've now left chaffinson gels behind me and I'm now going to follow the river through the fields towards chaffinson peter so here we have the river here now you can see it's back to really being a small stream again like it was up at Great Missingdon it seems between sort of Great Missingdon and Amisham it becomes a bit of a bigger river but now it's really gone back to being this small river and that's a rather interesting thing here and I don't really know much about it but if you look there's a ditch going off here which later on rejoins the river Missbore now it's it's got it's got a bit of water in it but not much a few weeks ago it was you know I wouldn't say it was full but it had more water in to me it looks like someone's built this man-made ditch there must be a pipe under here and I really don't know why because the natural course of the river meanders all around these fields but this seems to be a more straighter course straight up there in the long almost parallel to the road and as I should show you later on it does rejoin the main course if anyone knows why that other course was put in please do comment and tell me because you know as we've already discovered the river has been diverted it was diverted at Amisham and there's rumours that that's linked to why it sometimes dries up when they built the Amisham bypass they diverted if you look at the natural course see how it meanders all around these fields so what I'm going to keep doing now is I'm going to follow it all the way to Chalfont St Peter and well we're just going to keep going but I'm going to find a point where the ditch that they seem to have dug and the natural course reunites so I'm going to keep going that way to Chalfont St Peter I'll just come a little away from where we were a moment ago I just wanted to show you this this is a spring or was a spring a few weeks ago when our last came down here there was water flowing down here and into the river so it appears that perhaps as the water table has less water in the weather warms up there's less water to feed the mizborn now it as I've just said it really is the flow is a lot lower than it was the other side of Amisham so I'm wondering does the water effectively kind of just sort of seep into the ground or evaporate as we go along here whatever's happening there's less and less water as we go along which isn't sort of what most rivers do most rivers you know get bigger as they go along but it has always been like this from what I remember the mizborn as I said it rises and falls but it just does seem to be there's more water the other side of Amisham now we get to here there is another footpath along there and this seems to be a permissive path someone has made this rather unofficial looking bridge which is going to take us across there's quite a lot of water here that's because it opens out into quite a flat plane so yeah this is how it's either that or walk through the river and I haven't got wellies on today so oh it's about the old bridge can I do this on camera yes I can right there we go across it so this is the main path now from Charleston Jals Charleston Peter there is another path though that goes across there so my plan is to find that because we still need to find where the other man made course which runs along the length of those trees joins the main course so I'm going to carry on now in that direction and I'm now a bit closer to Charleston Peter well probably about half way actually at the moment between Charleston Peter and Charleston Jals I had to go back on myself to get across the whole river and the trench that I showed you had been dug well here is where the two joined so over there that's the main river and this is the trench there's a bit of water in it here but I'm not sure it is flowing out of there so obviously there's water coming along there but this is where the two reunite and then the river flows off up there interestingly over there there's another spring-like pond there's a few of these but that one appears to be not connected to the river at all but what I think all this this all becomes marshlands if um you know you've got prolonged periods of a lot of rain so whilst you can quite easily walk along there it's a bit squelchy under feet I think if you came here in the winter when there'd been a lot of rain it would be almost impossible unless you have wellies I'm now going to follow the path along here it crosses the river up there and we'll keep going till we get to Charleston Peter well we're now getting closer and closer towards Charleston Peter I was going along the main footpath which is just along there behind that hedge the A413 is over here there's this footpath that runs to A413 you can already see the beginning is the Charleston Peter now as for the river well something's happened look here we come to this bridge which when I was doing my Charleston Peter video we featured this bridge although I came from that end it's dried up now it wasn't then so what I'll do I'll insert a bit of footage from that video now so here we are in the Mistborn valley proper here's the river itself there's a rather um rickety old two-plank bridge over the river it's getting a bit muddy um but not enough to stop me from enjoying the walk so here we are here's the river Mistborn like I said we are in the future I'm going to do a video my intention is to walk all the way from Great Missingdon that way right down to Denham that way at some point in the future I've already done one on the free tributaries in Charleston Peter so have a look out for that video I'll put a link in now look at this bridge look how rickety it is not even sure if I should walk on that left flank it might break and then this one it's full of water um so yeah here it's all right to walk on um do I put my foot so I mean it's a bit bouncy but no it is safe so I'm going to carry on over to the style and along the river and the next part of the video we should be closer to the village centre again and as you can see it was flowing then so let's what we'll do we'll walk over the rickety bridge in this direction this time and then um I still want to carry on in that direction so just because I can and I'll walk through the river I'd rather be doing this with watering and wearing wellies so I'm going to walk through the river and um I'm going to carry on back up there towards the main path and soon we should be in Charleston Peter so now just come a little bit further along the path which runs between Charleston Peter and Charleston Charles now as we saw about there the river was dried up but if you look here thankfully it's short-lived because you can see pool of water down there and if you look just here through the hedge you can just see some water so there's springs here so those springs are beginning to fill the river again and it flows off in that direction the main dried up course is over there but this spring effectively has become a second source so we have a river that now flows on towards the river Colm it's the river though sort of from well from Great Missingdon through Amish and Charleston Charles it's weird how that just disappears I was going to try and find the spot where it actually disappears but I couldn't because it was private land between there and where it was dried up but the last point I could access it there was water but very low flow so it's strange really how it just sort of disappears into ground but like I said only a few weeks ago it was flowing all the way through and well with all this hot weather it's nice to have the hot weather but it does make me wonder if in a few weeks time more of the river could dry up but I'd like to think that isn't the case what I might do I'm not saying I definitely will but I could potentially do a follow-up video and we could see what if there is any progress if you look just there there you are we can see that tributary which flows off and up there joined to the main course I'm now going to continue on towards Chalms and Peter in the next one we shall be in Chalms and Peter itself well we've now reached Milmedo now if you think this looks familiar if you watch my videos where I explored all the plaques of Chalms and Peter then that's because we came to exactly this spot the reason I came here then was because I was showing you as a plaque just here now this one is relevant to the river Mistborn it tells you about a swimming pool that used to be here so you can see the plaque there and have a look at the Chalms and Peter video I'll show you tell you all about them in those videos but there was a swimming pool which was only had watering when the Mistborn was flowing and if we go over this bridge here this is the main course you can see we're back to a nice river you know with a lot of water in so the tributary we saw about there effectively saved the river and brought water back into the river and as far as I'm aware like I said it flows all the way through it's just a shame it can only be half a mile a quarter mile section where there isn't water in the river at the moment which is fairly good because I've known it be you know there not be water since this side of Chalms Front Park which we'll get to in the next video so it's great to see there is that much water in it but it just seems a bit of a shame there's that little bit with no water in it so that's Milmedo over there I'm going to continue this way and we'll have a look at the river in Chalms and Peter Village Center and that's where we shall end this one and in the next video we'll carry on towards through Chalms Front Park and on towards Denham so here we are we're almost at Chalms and Peter Village Center building over there that's the community center there's a rather interesting board just here now this so juicy walk you can do I've got a leaflet of those walks and they are really worth doing but the other thing it tells you I'm going to put an insert in now is about how and why the river does dry up part of the way along the section we looked at it's not fed from any springs so it just all seeps into the water it's relying on the strings further up but now we've come past that section and there's a few more springs and that's why we have water in the river through Chalms and Peter so I'm going to continue along this path along here you can see the river is just down there we've got the community center to us beside us over there there's the river so what my plan is now is to take you all the way into Chalms and Peter Village Center where the river quite literally disappears it doesn't dry up it disappears and you'll see more of which in a moment and in part four you'll be able to find out where it reappears so just going to keep going along this way there's a big park over there behind the community center that's where if you saw the earlier video I made the tributaries of the mizborn that flows that tributary flows along there that will actually see where it it joins so if you have a look at that video and you'll be able to see where those tributaries you know start and end so there's free in Chalms and Peter so before doing this I did a video on those three tributaries there's these pollarded willow trees along this section of the river there's quite an interesting bit coming up though that I particularly wanted to show you I'm just coming up towards the Greyhound pub now there's this bridge here there's also one of the plaques because there was a mill here once with a weir so have a look at that again if you watch the Chalms and Peter video you'll see that see this bridge here though this is fairly modern it's called the Vic-Wooten bridge and I'll show you there's a plaque about Vic-Wooten so he was someone who helped with the rescuing of the river mizborn when it seemed like it's going to be dried up forever but what I remember is the bridge before this one was a lot lower it must have been built because the flow was always so low and water used to flow over the top of it which I always used to find really amusing and I remember in a child I used to love paddling through it in my wellies now looking into the Greyhounds pub garden the river used to go straight along there when it flooded it went from dried up to flooded in about 2001 I think it was or 2002 there was literally water everywhere around here and they diverted to make it a straighter course and it hasn't flooded since but I remember when it did flood the whole or most of the village carpark was underwater it was really you know quite quite an interesting thing it wasn't very nice to the people whose houses were flooded but you just couldn't believe that it could go from one extreme being dried up to flooding and I think it might be something to do with when they later on were trying to rescue the river somehow ended up being too much water but it also helped the fact there was a lot of rain so effectively all or at least half the carpark was underwater it really was um very strange sight seeing as I said go from one extreme to another so this is the new course of the river the older course was just the other side of that grass and then came around here and joined now I said about the tributary of the river misborn which is culverted under the carpark in the other video where you can just see the water coming out below that tree and joining the main course and we're now heading into the village centre through the weeping willows into the village centre got the parish church just behind those trees there so there's the parish church so do have a look at my chervils and peter series you'll be able to hear a lot more about the village in that now when I said the river disappears this is what I mean it's culverted under st peter's court the 1960s shopping development now if you want to know where that culvert ends you'll have to watch the next video and in that video we're going to go finish through chalfant st peter and into chalfant park and up to the chilton mainline so thank you very much for watching please do feel free to like subscribe comment tell your friends about this area and about henry's adventures thanks very much for watching and goodbye