News: Cheers to 20 years

CWW is celebrating two landmarks in 2026. It’s our 20th anniversary year, and we’ve become the biggest Ramblers group in our region.

With 370 members, we’re not only the largest of the eight Ramblers groups in the Buckinghamshire, West Middlesex and Milton Keynes Area, but we’re also by far the biggest of the five weekend walkers groups across the Home Counties.

Ramblers Head of Membership, Nicola Fickling said: “It’s amazing news and testament to all the incredible hard work you do in creating a great culture in your group.”

Membership fell sharply during the Covid outbreak in 2020 but has steadily recovered since 2023. We’re now back to our highest total since the current Ramblers membership system was launched in 2018.

The CWW story began in 2005 when older members of the Chiltern 20s-30s walkers met over a casserole at a house in Wendover and discussed the idea of setting up a new group.

One of the founders, Andrew Zelin, said: “Not wanting to be responsible for putting off new younger people from joining, we looked at forming an intermediate age Ramblers group – perhaps a 40s plus group, in a way that had been pioneered by Surrey Area Weekend Walkers. At one point in the meeting we went through a list of typical Ramblers committee positions and shared them among us. I recall taking on three such positions initially!”

“A decision was made for the Chilterns 20s-30s to host special ’40-plus’ walks every month in order to build a following. These were well enjoyed by many regulars and included a weekend in Malmesbury which I organised.

“Forming a new Ramblers group is quite time consuming, involving various business cases and red tape and culminating in approval from the Area Committee. It wasn’t really until the latter part of 2006 that all this was completed. We were given our own budget and our informal ‘organising group’ transitioned into a fully-fledged committee. CWW was born!”

‘The group conceived in a casserole pot’ thrived from its first walk in Ashridge in September 2006. “I saw numbers grow very quickly,” says Andrew, who served as the first membership secretary. “It wasn’t long before members completely new to Ramblers outnumbered those who had come from the 20s-30s group.”

Andrew recalls how socials took off in the early years. “We remained close to the 20s-30s for the first year and we used to enjoy joint Xmas parties attended by over 100 people. The earliest ones were at Uplands, near High Wycombe. These were moved to a venue in Kings Langley – one of which was on a very snowy and icy night. Another where I met my future wife, Sue, and then The Bull in Gerrards Cross, by which time we had enough people to organise our own dedicated CWW parties.”

Christmas parties involving an overnight hotel stay became an annual fixture and have continued ever since, with weekend trips to the Cotswolds in December 2024 and 2025. Holidays in the early years took us to destinations including Austria, the French Alps and the Pyrenees.

Mick Hill, who served as the group’s first chair, remembers a whirlwind of weekends away to the Wye Valley, East Devon, North Cornwall, the Brecon Beacons, Hereford, Snowdonia, Derbyshire, West Yorkshire, Ashdown Forest and the South Downs. “I went on 10 trips over the period from 2007-09,” he said. “They filled up very quickly. Often, if you didn’t put your name down in the first couple of days you missed out.”

In 2012 a hard core of CWW’s long distance walkers took on Yorkshire’s Three Peaks challenge – a 26-mile marathon with 1,500 metres of ascent – all to be completed within 12 hours. The accomplishment was repeated in 2013 and 2014, with further challenge weekends in the Brecon Beacons in 2015 and 2016.

> Read more about the Three Peaks challenge

The Covid outbreak in 2020 sent CWW and the rest of Ramblers into a two-part hibernation, but members kept their spirits up by using the group’s Facebook page to share photos from their solo walks, discovering a shared passion for spotting weathervanes.

April 2021 saw walks resume, at first with restrictions on numbers. Andrew Zelin, now the group chair, said: “The government and Ramblers limits were generous in setting a limit of 30 people, but we kept it at 12 as we knew that members might be concerned about walking with such a large group and that having larger numbers may worry passers-by.”

In the post-Covid years, imaginatively themed walks have become a defining feature of CWW. There were 26 walks, each pegged to a letter of the alphabet. Boots, Banter And Breweries was a series featuring visits to six breweries. The Grand Huit walks pack in the maximum ascent. Not forgetting the Mill Walks, the Capital Ring, Chiltern Society walks, Early Risers, Mobilise to Socialise, Food and Drink of the Chilterns and numerous church tea walks. Famous People of the Chilterns is still going strong, revealing the region’s connections to its most famous historical figures.

Walking festivals have been held each September since 2022, featuring a collection of walks on the same day, all converging on a picnic at lunchtime. Fittingly, the 2026 festival will return to the Ashridge Estate, where the group took its very first steps 20 years ago.

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CWW’s 20-year timeline

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