IMAGES TAKEN NEAR TO
Woodhill Avenue, GERRARDS CROSS, SL9 8DP

This railway viaduct carries the Chiltern Line over both the A413 and the River Misbourne just east of Gerrards Cross. The same viaduct spans the M25 a few hundred metres east.

Just east of Gerrards Cross Station

The line was a very late addition to the national railway network, only being completed in 1906 as a joint venture by the Great Western and Great Central Railways. This is the view from the side of the Mill Lane bridge over it, looking towards the viaduct crossings of the A413 and then the M25.

Large houses in a private road.

This part of the River Misbourne was experiencing extreme low flows when this photograph was taken in the spring of 1997. The river here dried out for several months later that year, becoming dry from source downstream to the discharge point of Gerrards Cross sewage treatment works. Native white-clawed crayfish (Austropotamobius pallipes) were regularly seen in the Misbourne here until the channel dried in 1997. A short reach of the Misbourne here was one of the last places they could still be found across the home counties - from where they are now almost certainly locally extinct. The invasive North American signal crayfish (Pacifastacus leniusculus) is now abundant within the Misbourne, as elsewhere across much of southern England. The spread of this species has eradicated populations of native crayfish as they carry a lethal fungus and outcompete the smaller native species. Although signals first became established within Shardeloes Lake and the upper Misbourne during the early 1990s, the native crayfish population downstream was protected by the isolation caused by a lengthy intermediate section of river that remained perennially dry during this period.