Thirteen of us gathered outside the superstore at Didcot railway station. Today’s walk was an advertised 11 mile linear hike that ended up at Goring. I say “advertised” it is probable the mileage was a mile or two over that. Well, it certainly felt like that to me by the end of the walk.
I have done a couple of walks from Didcot previously; okay, the pretty much the same walk done twice but that one took in a circular route in a northerly direction. This time we headed south leaving Didcot and those cooling towers behind us. Within a mile or so we had reached the footpath that took us to the edge of East Hagbourne. Continuing on soft grassland we went past one or two brooks. On my reccy, I lost my bearings a little at this point which is quite easy to do around this area as some of the footpaths were not well way marked at all. Thankfully this time it was “alright on the night” and we continued as planned.
I was being more attentive to my surroundings than normal as I knew we had to take a left turning that was well disguised amongst the overgrown foliage. We found it without a hitch as it happens and soon approached the sleepy village of South Moreton. A pub existed put we didn’t go in and not for the first time on the walk we would ignore a hostelry.
Not long after we left South Moreton, having successfully walked through a field of a number of especially well behaved cows who were minding their own business – why can’t they all be like this? – We settled down to eat our picnic lunches. As we ate into our sarnies and the group discussion took a leftfield turn – the moon, stealing moon rock and the Moon Walk(!) – it was noted that a heat haze could be seen. For early September we were greeted with superb weather all day with wall to wall sunshine from beginning to end. I love walking in our beautiful idyllic countryside on days such as these.
Soon we were off again, taking in the only real hill on the walk which was barely little more than a 20 metre ascent. Cholsey was our next village to visit. It is here that we saw the gravestone of the world renowned crime novelist, Agatha Christie. Incidentally, this is the clue for today’s blog heading. We stopped briefly to have a look before continuing through the village with myself quickly correcting a couple of wrong turnings here and there. Unfortunately some of the walk was on hard concrete which didn’t help one of the members in the group who was suffering with blisters. He sensibly decided to bail out and caught the train at Cholsey rather than continue to suffer. Not long after we said cheerio the rest of the group spotted a shop and a few of us, including myself, took advantage by having an ice-cream.
Soon the hard concrete was over, at least temporarily, and we made to the Thames Path and made steady progress to Moulsford. I made the point here that this is my least favourite part of the Thames Path as it diverts away from the river and alongside a busy road for maybe half a mile. Still, it couldn’t be avoided and knowing that the pub stop was just minutes away kept the motivation going.
Having refuelled with liquid refreshment at this rather pleasant spot next to the river we completed the remainder of the walk, perhaps maybe two to three miles alongside
the Thames. Soon enough the conclusion came and waited for the return journey via train to Reading for most of us.