Over the years our group as done many lovely walks covering the Wargrave and Henley area but to my knowledge today’s walk was the first one to cover both towns within the same day. The walk started from Wargrave and ended in Henley where a few us stayed and had a bite to eat by the riverside.
In planning the walk I decided to take advantage of the bank holiday but making the route almost unnecessarily longer by initially heading in the opposite direction to where we needed to head. Well, most of us had a day to recover from our near 13 mile adventure so why not extend it a little.
Initially 14 of us gathered at the train station at the start, most making use of the public transport. The route took us the chalk pit in Wargrave. This previously was an area that was at threat of being built on several years ago but now remains an environmental area of natural space where wildlife flourishes. We continued on towards but not quite not quite reaching Twyford where our numbers increased by one to fifteen. Someone had some misfortune and was unable to make the train to the start due to their initial train being delayed so improvised by walking from Twyford and thankfully we met up easily enough.
It wasn’t long before we reached our southern most point of the walk and we then turned to head towards Hare Hatch, crossing the A4 and then continued on to Crazies Hill through quite footpaths, many were accompanied by the fine sight of bluebells which were out in full bloom. We also stopped briefly at Rebecca’s well, built in 1870 to provide people of Crazies Hill of water and then a short lunch stop was had. Many of the footpaths were familiar to some of the regulars in the group, not least the walk leader himself.
We soon reached the tiny Berkshire village of Cockpole Green with the sun basking down on us. Sun tan lotion was required. However, as our ramble heading towards the Thames Path we looked upwards where an ominous black cloud lurked. Would the weather Gods turn against us? In a way it did as the cloud dispersed its contents as we arrived at our pub stop in Aston. Personally this was slightly frustrating from my viewpoint as it had meant everyone had congregated into a crowded pub and our group fragmented to where we could find some space. The shower was very brief, so a couple of us ended up going outside anyway.
We continued onwards along the Thames Path though Hambleden lock – where was the usually reliable ice cream van? – before the walk eventually concluded in Henley. The group then split with some heading straight to the station to make the short journey back to Wargrave while the rest of us and a few drinks and ordered our dinner by the riverside although we didn’t out late into the evening as it started to get bit chilly. Good time was had by all.
