Ancient woodland twelve minutes from Slough
Burnham Beeches lies just north of the village of Burnham, close enough to Slough station that a guest can be under the trees within a quarter of an hour of leaving a hotel car park. It has belonged to the City of London since 1880, when the Corporation bought it to keep it open to the public, and it is now protected as a National Nature Reserve. The City still manages it, which is why it feels looked after rather than merely left alone.
What makes it remarkable are the pollards. For centuries local people cut the beech and oak trees above head height for firewood, and the trees responded by throwing up clusters of new branches from swollen, gnarled trunks. The cutting stopped in the nineteenth century and the branches kept growing, so the old pollards now stand like enormous candelabra, some of them several hundred years old. There is nothing else quite like them this close to London, and in autumn they are at their best.
When the colour actually comes
Beech turns late. In most years the colour starts to show in the middle of October, builds through the last week of the month and peaks somewhere around the turn into November, when the canopy goes from green through copper to a deep, glowing gold. The best of it lasts roughly a fortnight. A warm, dry autumn can bring it forward, and a single night of hard wind can strip a good part of it in one go, so the honest advice is to watch the weather rather than the calendar.
The clocks go back on the last Sunday of October, which this year falls on the twenty fifth, and after that the afternoons shorten quickly. The low sun turns the woods gold from about half past three, the light is at its richest around four, and by half past five it is properly dark under the trees. That is the window to plan around. Go on a weekday if you can, because fine autumn weekends bring families and dog walkers out in force, and the woods are far more peaceful on a Tuesday.
Walking for the four o'clock light
The main approach is from the Farnham Common side, where there is parking and a café near the start of the surfaced drives that run through the woods. Those drives are flat and firm underfoot and fine in ordinary shoes. They pass many of the best pollards and are the right choice for a gentle hour before dinner.
Step off them and the ground falls away into shallow valleys with streams, boggy hollows and ponds, where the paths are unsurfaced and the mud in late October is real. Those are the walks that feel most like old forest. In the late afternoon the sun is low in the south west, so the open edges and the slopes that face it catch the light first and hold it longest. Walk with the sun behind you on the way back and the whole canopy lights up ahead.
Leave the fungi where they grow, keep to the paths in the protected areas, and head back towards the car park while there is still colour in the sky. The woods get dark far faster than the fields around them, and a torch on a phone is a poor substitute for daylight on a root strewn slope. Check when the car park closes before you set off.
What to wear, and what to bring
Boots or stout shoes for anything off the surfaced drives, a warm layer for the moment the sun drops, and a change of shoes in the car for dinner. It sounds fussy. It is the difference between walking into a warm dining room comfortably and spending the first half hour of the meal with wet feet.
Your companion will dress the same way if you tell her the plan in advance: something for the woods, something for the table, and a coat that survives both. Put the walk in the first message to Etta so that nobody arrives at the edge of an ancient woodland in heels.
The fireside dinner that ends the day
The reason to walk at four is to be sitting down somewhere warm by six. The house on Grove Road stands at the edge of the woodland with a fire in the colder months and a dining room that keeps its own hours, which makes it the obvious place to finish. Farnham Common, on the other side of the woods, has a small village centre with pubs and restaurants of its own, and Burnham village has a handful of pubs along its long street. As always, these are named because guests use them, and none has any arrangement with this desk.
Book the table before the walk rather than after it. Country dining rooms fill early on autumn weekends and close earlier than a London guest expects, and a table at half six after an afternoon outside is exactly the right shape for the day.
Shaping the booking around the light
This is the kind of day the girlfriend evening is made for: unhurried, arranged so that nothing about it feels transacted, with a walk, a meal and a long conversation nobody is timing. Because the light comes early, the booking starts early too. Four hours at £900, running from three in the afternoon to seven, covers the walk, the change of shoes and dinner. Three hours at £700 suits a shorter walk and an early table. Guests staying at the hotel on Grove Road sometimes book the overnight at £1,800 and let the day end at breakfast.
Your companion usually arrives by train at Burnham station and takes a short ride up to meet you, so a fixed meeting point and time are far more use to her than a vague afternoon. She is given the fee in person as the booking begins, exactly as Etta's reply set it out. For drivers, the guide to the M4 junctions explains which exit brings you closest.
Who to walk with
Lea is the natural choice. She is the Burnham regular, petite and auburn, fond of long walks in the Beeches, open fires and dinners with no rush in them, and happiest where the nearest streetlight is some way off. Margo keeps her country evenings around Burnham too, likes houses with grounds and evenings with no schedule attached, and has exactly the unhurried temperament an autumn afternoon wants.
Liana loves long avenues of trees and is precise about how far a walk really is, which matters when the light is going. Lea is on the auburn list, the rarest colouring on this desk, and on the petite list as well, while Margo and Liana are both among the slender. Send Etta the date as soon as the colour starts to show.
Cross filed: most of the names on this marker also sit on the brunettes list under by look.