The best walks and hikes around Foxcote Reservoir

The Fane of Pastoral Poetry is a small octagonal temple of ashlar stone, four sides pierced by semi-circular headed arches. The building originally had a steeply domed roof it is now maintained as a roofless ruin. The temple was built by Gibbs in about 1726-7 on the site now occupied by Queen Caroline's Monument and was known as the Gibbs building. It was originally surrounded by the eight Rysbrack British Worthies. Plans were prepared by Borra to convert it to a Temple of Diana but this was never carried out. It was demolished and re-erected in a simpler form on its present site in the mid 1760's. Also known as the Belvedere and in the sale catalogues as the Egyptian Building. Small roofless structure 1727/3 by Gibbs, as The Belvedere. Re-erected on present site 1760's. Ashlar stone with moulded cornice. Octagonal, 4 sides pierced by semi-circular headed arches, with keyblocks, stepped architraves and impost mouldings. Blank oculi in angled faces. In a glade in the wood at the far end of the Grecian Valley is the small open-sided temple or belvedere designed by Gibbs for Lord Cobham, and first set up as part of the early, western phase of the garden in September 1729. It was originally known simply as ‘Gibbs’s Building’ and stood on a mound (accommodating an ice-house) in an almost exactly opposite relationship to the house, to the south-west, where it provided a viewpoint towards the Rotondo and the Queen’s Theatre, and housed the series of busts by Rysbrack (Bacon, Hampden, Locke, Milton, Newton, Shakespeare, Queen Elizabeth and William III) which were later transferred to the Temple of British Worthies in the Elysian Fields. Gibbs’s Building was repositioned by Earl Temple in the 1760s to frame a view of Wolfe’s Obelisk, which he had recently set up outside the gardens to the north, and was rechristened the Fane of Pastoral Poetry. The building also provided framed prospects over the surrounding park, reached via the shady groves of the Grecian Valley. Van Nost’s lead figure of Thalia, the Muse of Pastoral Poetry, was placed just to the north of it. The statue was one of his series of Apollo and the Nine Muses which was removed from the South Vista in the 1740s (see p. 24), but she no longer survives at Stowe. The four terms once outside the Fane are now at Port Lympne. Statue - Muse of Pastoral Poetry - was installed on Tuesday the 4th December 2018. This statue is a direct copy of the c18th lead statue of Heroic Poetry located on the Grenville Column which is attributed to van Nost. Originally (1720s) this statue was locatd on the south front parterre. Source: https://heritagerecords.nationaltrust.org.uk/HBSMR/MonRecord.aspx?uid=MNA130213

Lying in a rolling Buckinghamshire landscape of arable fields, pasture and woodland, Foxcote Reservoir is the kind of place that rewards patient visitors. Created in 1956 by damming a small tributary of the River Great Ouse, this site has become important for the numbers of wintering waterfowl, especially wigeon and coot. https://www.bbowt.org.uk/nature-reserves/foxcote-reservoir

From here it is not far to the Palladian Bridge.

Enjoyable stretch of jogging along the beautiful River Great Ouse that runs through Buckingham.

Meander along paved paths through the pretty Bourton Park. The park is home to a diverse eco-system featuring kingfishers, frogs, and otters.

Woodland walk along the edge of the magnificent Stowe Landscape Gardens. If you have time, you may want to divert into the gardens and explore the many structures and statues here.

Pleasant section of walking through a mosaic of farmland.

"The present church was entirely rebuilt about 1450, its refoundation being traditionally ascribed to the munificence of the two maiden daughters of the last Thomas Pever, who died in 1429. The only remains from the former church are the late 12thcentury font and some 12th-century moulded stones, re-used in the rear arches of the windows of the north porch. As might be expected in the case of a building erected at a single period, the whole work is carried out in a most complete and elaborate manner, and may challenge comparison with any existing examples of contemporary date in the country. The vestry, porches, and ground stage of the tower are fan-vaulted, and the design of the tower itself is especially remarkable for the boldness and originality displayed in the design of the two upper stages. The walling throughout is of limestone rubble, the south wall of the chancel and the walls of the original vestry being covered with rough-cast. The building was restored in 1882–7, when the vestry was enlarged by the westward extension, which touches the south-east angle of the nave." Cit. https://www.northbuckinghamparish.org.uk/welcome/st-edmunds-maids-moreton-/