Knocking Hoe, the Pegsdon Hills and Barton Hills have featured in numerous entries this year. Besides the sweeping views they are great places for wildflowers and wildlife. Now managed as nature reserves they are surviving examples of chalk grassland, an important habitat. 

 They straddle the Hertfordshire/Bedfordshire border linked by the Icknield Way which makes for seriously good walking if nature is your thing. Some stretches of the Way itself are rich in flora and fauna and there are other smaller sites of interest nearby like Hexton Chalk Pit.

 My home town of Hitchin is about an hour's walk away but discovering that a local bus runs through Pegsdon and Barton-le-Clay once a week has helped my perambulations considerably. As I don't have a car the challenge for me is how to get to the middle of nowhere by public transport. Often that means a train, a bus then start walking. 

 Last time I visited Dartmoor for example I found there was a bus that ran from Newton Abbot along the eastern flank of the moor on a Tuesday. I wonder if it still does? Rural routes are being axed left, right and centre. I have applied the train/bus/walk method in America but there public transport is even scarcer. 

 I remember wandering around Shasta City (actually a small town) trying to find the bus stop after hiking on Mount Shasta. I knew there was a sporadic service to the neighbouring town of Dunsmuir. An Amtrak passenger train stops there at midnight en route from Seattle to Los Angeles. About eight hours later it stops in Oakland where there's a shuttle to San Francisco.

 I asked various good citizens if they knew where the bus stopped. The first person I asked was incredulous:

"There's a bus? Where are you trying to get to?"

"To Dunsmuir, to get the train to Oakland".

"There's a train? To Oakland??"

 Eventually I spotted a man who I thought might be a fellow hiker though he looked pretty gnarly with an archaic rucksack. Turned out he was a hobo. He did indeed know where and when the bus stopped because he was heading to Dunsmuir to jump a freight train to Denver. Anyway he and I and a local teenager were the only passengers on the bus and we had a nice chat with the driver who seemed glad of the company.