Penn Wood was the final walk of a day spent working through the OS Short Walks Made Easy series in the Chilterns, following earlier walks at Tring Reservoirs and Coombe Hill. I had never visited the wood before and knew virtually nothing about it, which was part of the appeal. Tucked away in the Chilterns, it looked like a compact patch of woodland worth exploring simply to see what was there.

Unlike some walks where a viewpoint, historic site or particular landscape feature provides the main draw, this one was really about the woodland itself. The published route offered a ready-made circuit through Penn Wood, and after two other walks earlier in the day, its relatively short distance made it a good final exploration. I was also carrying a Garmin eTrex 22x, giving me an opportunity to observe how its GNSS position behaved beneath dense tree cover, although that remained secondary to the walk itself.

On paper, there was little about the route that looked complicated: no road crossings, no major climbs and mostly established woodland trails forming a circuit from the Woodland Trust car park.

I expected a mixture of compacted woodland tracks, grass and more natural forest paths, with the mapping suggesting both coniferous and non-coniferous woodland along the way. There were no particular landmarks I was setting out to find and no changes were made to the published route. The aim was simply to spend an hour or so exploring Penn Wood and get a feel for the place.

The main exception is Beamond End Pond, on the northern side of the circuit, and it became the clear highlight of the walk. Extended dry conditions had left very little open water, so the pond had more of a boggy appearance, with sharp-flowered rush growing around it. A small bench tucked among the ferns offered a natural place to stop, listen to the woodland and spend a little longer noticing the plants around the water. In a route where much of the scenery is similar, the pond provides a welcome focal point and a quiet place to pause and take in the woodland surroundings.

Back on the trails, the remainder of the walk returns to the familiar pattern of dense woodland and straightforward paths. There are a number of smaller trails branching away from the main routes, some of which are not shown on the OS map. They never caused any real confusion, but they do hint at the possibility of creating different variations through the wood if Penn Wood were somewhere you visited regularly.

Close to the start of the route, Holy Trinity Church also gives the walk a feature beyond the woodland itself and is worth taking a moment to look at before or after the walk. Beyond that, though, this is very much a forest walk from beginning to end.

Navigation was uncomplicated for most of the walk, with the OS Maps App and the Short Walks Made Easy guidebook providing everything needed for the route. The mapped paths generally matched the main trails on the ground well, and the GPS position appeared accurate throughout. The exception came on the southern section of the circuit, where the route described in the guidebook followed paths that were not shown in OS Maps, so I had to rely more closely on the guidebook at this stage.

That does not mean the guidebook can be followed without paying attention. Woodland junctions often look remarkably similar, and Penn Wood is no exception. The important thing is making sure you act at the correct junction rather than assuming each turning will be visually distinctive.

The eTrex 22x also provided a useful small experiment beneath the tree canopy. While the unit itself remained stationary, the plotted position appeared to move, illustrating the familiar effect of GPS position wander under challenging reception conditions. Rather than going into the technical detail here, I’ve covered this behaviour separately in the Field Guide on why GPS position can wander.

Penn Wood works well as a short, easy woodland circuit. There are no roads anywhere on the route, something many walkers will appreciate, and the paths are generally straightforward with terrain that should be manageable for walkers of most abilities, including families and less-experienced walkers. A few small climbs appear along the way, but nothing feels out of the ordinary for a woodland walk of this length.

Its main weakness is variety. Dense woodland dominates almost the entire walk, and although that is exactly what some walkers will be looking for, there are few major changes of scenery to break it up. Beamond End Pond provides the strongest interruption to that pattern and, for me, was easily the most memorable part of the route.

I would recommend the walk, particularly for anyone wanting a simple hour-long woodland outing, a family walk or a local dog-walking circuit. I probably would not return specifically to repeat the same route because there is not enough variety to draw me back, although the network of smaller woodland paths suggests there would be scope to explore Penn Wood differently on another visit.