 Hello, thank you for joining me. I'm in the Dukeswood estate of Jarge Cross today. The reason I've come here is because where I am here is the first place you can see one of the streams which flows into the rather secretive river Alderborne. It's just here, down there. Doesn't look like much, but that stream which is flowing through someone's garden goes off under the road, under that house and down there, and it joins the river Alderborne in the village of Forma. So what we're going to do, we're going to head on down there in my car and we're going to follow the Alderborne and see where it takes us because it's a very secretive river. There's very few places the public can actually see it, so we'll leave Dukeswood estate behind, jump in my larder and we're going to go down to Forma. So I parked the larder down in Forma, just walked up the road back towards Jarge Cross lined with daffodils. Now we saw the stream which flows towards the Alderborne in Dukeswood. Beyond Dukeswood it goes under the M40 and then our next sighting of the stream is across this field. As you can see there's a bit of a lake. It's shown on the map as fish ponds. Now the M40 is just there. You can just see the odd lorry and a few vehicles. There's more fish ponds to the north of the M40 but I couldn't really see them well enough to be worth showing them. So there's more fish ponds up there which are obviously man-made. There's probably an interesting culvert which takes the water under the motorway. So it goes down there and then it joins the main course of the Alderborne. So what I'm going to do now is walk back down into Forma and we'll go and find the main course of the Alderborne. I've just come down the hill now back in towards the village of Forma. Behind this wall here is Forma Place. It's quite a large, quite attractive house. I believe it's now apartment. It's private so I won't be able to take you inside but I believe on the other side that hedge the river possibly forms like an ornamental feature of the gardens. Now here is the village of Forma. So what we're going to do is I'm going to show you the centre of the village of Forma. It's a very small but very attractive village. I'll show you the official course of the River Alderborne because as far as I'm aware what we've been looking at so far is just the stream. It's not the actual Alderborne. So let's have a look. So there's the little church. We're going to have a quick look at that as well. So it's just a pleasant village. Not far from Jarrods Cross. Let's get across the road. So here's the first official clue to anything being to do with the Alderborne. This road here, look it's called Alderborne Lane. So we're going to be following Alderborne Lane, partly on foot, partly in the larder and here is the actual Alderborne itself. Right down there in a cutting and then it goes into a culvert. Well I'll tell you it's not cutting. You know what I mean? There we are. I'll let you see it through the railings. So one thing I'm going to have to do, once we've had a look at the village, I'm going to have to put wellies on and I'm going to go down into the cutting or sorry I keep saying cutting. I know it's not cutting. It's me thinking in railway terms. Into the river and through the culvert it must come out over there somewhere. But here is Forma Parish Church. I've never been in this church. I would like to one day so perhaps another day I'll come and have a look in the church. But now I'm going to walk up there to try and find or get as close to the source of the Alderborne as I possibly can. So this is about as close as I can get to the source of the main branch of the river Alderborne, somewhere in those fields. They're all a bit flooded. You can just see the M40 up there. There's a little farm there. So it officially bubbles up in there and it seems to have flooded the fields a bit and then the river flows off down towards Forma. We're about a quarter of a mile away now from Forma on this public footpath. That way if you went there you could go back to George Cross or Stoke Poges and then this way is the way I've just come along to Forma. So I'm just going to show you up here. There's one bit you can see the river flowing across the fields. It then goes behind the houses and then somewhere it must come to that culvert that I showed you. So when I showed you the culvert in Forma that was the downstream end of the culvert. A slight mystery as to where the upstream end is but I'm determined to find it. So what I'm going to probably do is when I get back I'm going to replace my trainers when I get back to the car for wellies. I'm going to get in the river and see if I can actually get through the culvert. I thought if I can't find the end of the culvert on that and I'll just go in the culvert and walk through it and see if I can find the other end of it. So here we come to the end of the footpath. So here are we at Hedgley. That way and Forma Village that way. So I'm going to follow the Daffodil lined lane back to Forma. Now this field where we have a few cattle. You can just see where it's a bit flooded but then the river flows off just down there. That's the course of the river and then the house you can see that's the beginning of Forma Village. So I'm going to follow this Daffodil lined lane back to Forma Village and I'm going to go and put my wellies on and get in the river. Well here I am looking a little bit different. I'm in the Alderborne and I'm ready to go underground. I'm going to show you here. When I said it's in a cutting I know I'm using railway terminology but see how deep down into the ground it is. And that culvert it didn't look that impressive from above but have a look at it now. It's really quite an exciting piece of architecture. It's pitch black so I've got my head taught John and I'm going to attempt to go through it and see what's on the other side. There's also an awful bit. So that must be another stream that's culverted from somewhere up the hill and it joins the Alderborne here. Anyway, time to go underground. So here I am. I am just inside the culvert. Now I was hoping to take it all the way through but unfortunately there's very deep silt so I can't. It's going to go above my wellies. But I'll let you have a look through like that with my torch. If you look to there I can see this was a road bridge as far as where I'm shining the torch. And then there's a slight kink. I can just about, you probably can't. You just see daylight. So what I think they've done is there was an area on the other side. I'll show you when we get back up to ground level on the video screen. A bit like this. What I've done, they've covered it over and made it into a culvert. So I really did hope to take you through there. So I'm sorry I couldn't do that. But what I'll show you with this stick here, I'll show you how deep the silt is. So if I put the stick into the silt, just up here, then it goes, see what I mean, it goes down quite a way. So I can't go in there. It's too dangerous. So maybe one day I'll try and do it away. But I think the other thing to do now is to get back up to ground level. I'll show it to you from street level. Now I've worked out where the other culvert is. And then we'll carry on further upstream and see what we can find. So here we are back up at ground level. That's the culvert we were down in. So as I was saying, I could see it used to be a bridge and they've filled the second half in to make a longer culvert. So if we have a look here, you can see the parapet there where it says Alderborne Lane. I reckon there was probably another parapet about here somewhere. So it had just been a simple bridge. And then where there was a slight kink here, where these liner benches are, the river would have been out for you to see it, except it would have been down in quite a deep cutting, as I pointed out, as it is on that side. So where I'm walking now, I'm technically walking upstream above the river. So this is what I was hoping to do down in the culvert. But as I said, it was just too silty. It had gone over my wellies and I could have got stuck in a rather dangerous position. So I thought it was best to be safe and come out. But I just really want to go through it. Anyway, I have found the other end. It's just here. Not that exciting really, but there we have the river. And yeah, so I was going to go there. I probably wouldn't have been able to have climbed up. I'd have probably just been able to have, I'd have got someone to film me and I'd have waved and be like, hello, I'm down down in the culvert. So anyway, what I'm going to do now, I'm going to go back to my larder, swap the wellies back for shoes and we're going to drive up the Alderbourne and to another place, I know, where you, we should see it quite nicely. So we're going to leave the beautiful little village of Fulmer now and follow the Alderbourne upstream in the direction of the River Colm. So this is just a little bit down Alderbourne Lane. The river is still down, down there in its deep cut in and I'm going to have to go that way. So there's the larder. I'm going to jump in the larder and we're going to drive on up Alderbourne Lane and see what more of the Alderbourne we can find. So we're now driving along Alderbourne Lane. As you can see, the Alderbourne is never far from Alderbourne Lane and when we get to the junction here, we are going to have to drive right through the river because there's a water squash. So that's Alderbourne Lane. Here, as you can see, the car in front, that's the water squash. So we're going to drive through the Alderbourne and then I'm going to have to turn around and come back. So yeah, this is always exciting when we get back to Alderbourne. So we're now going to turn the car around, then we're going to carry on towards Iverheath. I couldn't resist just getting out of the car to go and inspect the Ford myself. So here it is. I've come through this Ford various times over the years and I've always been fascinated with it. I don't think I've ever actually walked through it before. I've only ever been through it in the car. Interestingly, there's possibly another stream coming in here and I think there's a stream on the other side and I can't walk through this. I did take that stick with me that I've left it in the car. So here I am literally standing in the middle of the Alderbourne in the Ford which I've been through so many times but never actually walked through. There's also appears to be another stream coming down here and joining the river from there. So there must be another spring up there and I'll walk back over the bridge. Seedy. So it's not even a foot deep so I suppose I could just read that before walking into the river wondering how deep it was. So a nice little narrow bridge and the river flows off down there. Now it's going to be up there where things are really going to get complicated because it goes through the junction of the M25 and the M40. So might be easier said than done trying to look at that bit. Supposedly though more people have been to space than seeing the river between those junctions. So I wonder what we can do. I wonder if we can go and have a closer look. I wonder if we can go somewhere where more people have been to space than this river. I don't know but I think the thing to do is to jump in my car and go for a drive find out. Well now on a road called Seven Hills Road. You can tell it's very noisy that's because we're going over the M25 and one of my videos where we end up crossing the M25 you may have seen. I did a video a while back at Chawley Wood where we had a look at where the Metropolitan line went under the M25. Well somewhere down there the Alderborne goes under the M25. We'll go under the slip road and up there is the junction with the M40 under the slip road under the M25 and then under two more slip roads. So my plan is to see if we can get anywhere close. So look ahead up there just after this bridge there's a public footpath. Now my plan is to go down that public footpath and that will at the very least it will take us to the Alderborne further downstream from where we last saw the Alderborne at the Ford. It's probably about a mile as the crow flies but it's been quite a long way around. I've had to drive up to Iverheath. I've left my car in Iverheath Village Centre which is about three-quarters of a mile that way. I came along a long footpath along the edge of the motorway which brought me to here. Now just up here there will be a public footpath. So my plan is to try and find the public footpath and just over there is Pinewood Studios where a lot of films and television are made. So give you an idea of where we are. Now this public footpath I'm looking for should be oh yeah that's good I can see the sign. I assume the way it's shown that we've got these very faint signs we've got one there and one there before the motorway the public footpath probably went straight across here so it's had to be diverted slightly because of the motorway. So now I'm going to head off down this public footpath and let's see if we can find the Alderborne. I'm just making friends with the locals on my walk. We are now heading down towards the valley of the Alderborne so we come to here. The Alderborne must be there's a pylon in the distance which the camera I don't think is picking it out but the river Alderborne is down at the bottom of this field. So it's when I get down there the question is what can we see. The river's obviously come through this motorway junction so I'm going to try and get a closer look at that. So let's go down and find the Alderborne. So I'm now at the bottom of the field where we met those friendly horses at the top. Just there's a couple of sit roads between the M25 and the M40. We come down here and here is the river again we're reunited with the river. As I've said this is a river where you know there's very few places that the public can actually see it and we did the river Mizborn and most we could pretty much follow the whole river this one we just got to cross it on the few places you can. There's another stream there flowing along into the river so I'm going to cross the river here on this bridge and then we're going to have a look and see what happens where it comes under the road. So the footpath continues that way towards those woods. The river goes away from public viewing in that direction. I'm going to follow it up to here and just see what I can see really. I really don't know what to expect. It could be a great big culvert that I could walk through. It might be just a small tube. I don't know but I can see so I can see it now. I can see straight through it. So well this is where it's going to get interesting. That's the culvert now certainly big enough for me to stand up in and walk through. The question is if it's too deep I'm not going to be able to go through it but if it is too deep what I might do I might just have to go and invest in some waders and come back another day. So I'm just going to make my way around those bushes and try and get a closer look. So here we are just slightly upstream of that bridge. Here is the culvert under two slip roads. Now I've just attempted to try and walk through it. It looks um really it did look quite nice and I thought yeah I might just be able to walk straight through it but the sill as soon as you start walking on it it all starts bubbling up. I started sinking so it's basically too dangerous to go through. I might try and come back in the summer and have another go but see this stick I put this stick in here let's pull this stick out we should be able to see how deep it is. So right yeah it's hard to show you I appreciate. It is deep but deep really deep deeper than my wellies so I'm not going to attempt to go any further. I'm going to walk home now or walk back to my car and drive home and have a cup of tea I think. What I think I'll do though another day we'll find out what the rest of the river has in store. Don't think it's going to be quite as exciting as this and like I said perhaps if the river gets to a very low flow or even dries up I don't really want to see the river dried up if it does dry up on a very hot day in the summer perhaps we'll come back and have another go at trying to go through these culverts because I really am intrigued to see what's on the other side. So I hope you enjoyed this little video from the River Audubon one of the lesser known rivers of Buckinghamshire thank you very much for watching please do feel free to like subscribe and comment and from a culvert under a couple of slip roads thank you very much for watching goodbye.