'Along this particular stretch of line no express had passed,’ wrote Aldous Huxley. His alter ego, Denis, was on the train to Crome, a thinly disguised Garsington Manor, home of the literary salon of Ottoline Morrell.

She hosted intellectuals and writers such as D H Lawrence, Virginia Woolf and Huxley, who arrived there in 1916 to do war work after leaving Oxford University. Huxley’s comic novel Crome Yellow, published in 1921, caricatured Lady Ottoline so cruelly that their friendship never recovered.

The novel is not much read now, and is interesting mainly for a passage in which the philosopher Scogan (an amalgam of Bertrand Russell, WG Wells and Norman Douglas) suggests a future in which “vast state incubators” will create a governing elite and lesser breeds to carry out routine work — the theme of Huxley’s masterpiece Brave New World.

But it was a different question that puzzled my husband George: “Which station did Denis use?”

We set out one sunny day on a walk in search of Huxley’s railway line, and the views of “faraway blue hills . . . the treeless skylines. . . the beauty of those deeply embayed combes, scooped in the flanks of the ridge”.

There was never a railway station in Garsington (confusingly, Morris Cowley station occupied the site of an earlier halt called Garsington Bridge), and we decided Huxley’s fictional railway station, Camlet, was probably Horspath or Wheatley. Since there was no train, we caught the bus — a new hourly Thames Travel service called the T1, which passes Garsington en route from Oxford to Watlington.

Denis’s ridge, known as the Oxford Heights, encompasses Shotover Hill and the hilltop villages of Garsington and Cuddesdon. We decided to try to tackle the three peaks (maximum height 130m) in one day.

We got off at Kiln Lane, at the foot of Garsington, and walked along the lane to take a path left, parallel to the road. The path, on a south-facing slope, climbs gradually to give views of the Thames Valley and Wittenham Clumps.

It is well-trodden, but can be muddy because of the springs which appear where the Oxford clay meets the limestone of the Oxford Heights.

The springs were highly valued by early settlers — a fact reflected in local placenames such as Pettiwell, the name of the road we crossed to continue on the footpath to the church.

The fields were alive with wild flowers when we walked there in June, and the churchyard benches are a fine place to sit and enjoy the views. Inside the church is a plaque of Lady Ottoline by the sculptor Eric Gill. The path continues around the back of the manor, but we diverted to see the medieval pond — and Huxley’s granary, perched on ‘four stone mushrooms’.

In Crome Yellow, the 17th-century building has been appropriated as a studio by the artist Gombauld, and shakes on its ‘toadstools’ as he stamps his foot in frustration at his failure to seduce the lovely Anne.

In fact the granary, perched on staddle stones to protect the grain from rats and damp, is not part of the manor, but in the garden of Home Close, opposite.

However, to the writer of fiction, anything is possible. It is an unusual building, and must have caught Huxley’s eye.

We returned to walk around the back of the Manor on the right of way, peering at the yew hedges through which Huxley’s characters hide and seek, and admiring the views. Wittenham Clumps were known as Mother Dunch’s buttocks — could they have inspired Huxley’s ruminations on the curving hills that reminded him of a woman’s breast?

Emerging on to the road (Southend) further down the hill from the manor, we continued downhill, then took a path left, passing a strange statue of a stag in the middle of a field just before Denton Lane, Chippinghurst.

This hamlet is the focus of a campaign by Oxfordshire Ramblers to reopen a crossing of the River Thame, and the lack of a river crossing has caused some of the paths to fall into disuse.

Taking the track towards Chippinghurst Manor, we climbed a stile on the left towards Cuddesdon. This path has recently been improved with a new footbridge, but the first section was difficult to follow and seems to be little used — surprisingly, since the path up to Cuddesdon is visible from miles away as a clear line up the middle of a ploughed field. The route deserves to be more popular, since it offers fine views of Huxley’s “faraway blue hills”.

After a welcome ploughman’s lunch at the Bat and Ball pub in Cuddesdon, we walked on the road past Ripon College, which had been visible for some time as a brick and stone complex on the skyline.

We took another little-used path down to a dry valley and joined the track leading up from Denton House to Boundary Farm. This track also gives magnificent views of the Ridgeway, from Coombe Hill above Chequers almost to White Horse Hill.

We joined the road briefly to find the Green Belt Way (another overgrown path) down to Horspath.

It was here that we finally found the railway. Nothing remains of Horspath Halt, but the line remains intact to the south as far as BMW Cowley, and to the north as far as Wheatley, where housing has been built on the former station site.

Horspath bridge was saved after a public outcry at British Rail’s plans to demolish it, and the line now leads to a nature reserve, with official access at the Butts Road bridge.

The centrepiece is the tunnel under Shotover Hill, which has been bricked up to provide a hibernation area ideal for bats. It was too sunny for bats, but the ponds were buzzing with insects for them to feed on, as well as tadpoles — a tribute to the work of conservation volunteers.

From the wildlife area, a path leads up to Shotover. The Green Belt way takes you down to Thornhill Park and Ride, but we took the road down to Headington and a number four bus home.

* Our walk was 16km (10 miles) but could be shortened to 15km by starting at the Plough bus stop (named after a former pub that is now a house) and walking down Pettiwell to Garsington Church footpath. Another 4km could be saved by returning on the bus from Horspath (Heyfordian Travel 103 and 104, Monday to Saturday only) www.heyfordian.travel/bus_services/

For buses to Garsington (Thames Travel T1 service, also Monday to Saturday only) visit the website: www.thames-travel.co.uk

OS Map Explorer 180 Oxford. Refreshments: Bat and Ball, Cuddesdon, 01865 874 379, www.batball.co.uk