14 July
Walk with Ray, along some of the country roads north of Reading that he often cycles along.
This was a lovely walk through pretty wooded countryside along some country lanes and footpaths. Several of the lanes had signs by them denoting them as a ‘Quiet Lane’ – I hadn’t been familiar with this concept but according to the CPRE, local authorities can designate lanes in rural areas as ‘Quiet Lanes’. They’re apparently intended as a way for people to walk, cycle and horse ride in a ‘safer environment’, which I assume means with less risk of being taken out by passing vehicles. Quiet Lanes were evidently an outcome of the CPRE’s ‘Safer Country Lanes’ campaign.
We drove to Cane End via Horsepond Road and turned onto a quiet road (Park Lane) running through woods. Parked up here and Ray made us coffee and a bacon roll, courtesy of his camper van's cunning little kitchen. After breakfast we headed into the woods and joined a path running through the wood to come out at a crossroads, where we turned north along a country lane towards Stoke Row.
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| Breakfasting in the woods |
The tiny Well Cottage next to the well was apparently built for the well’s caretaker. It isn’t much bigger than the well so it’s to be hoped the caretaker didn’t have too many possessions.
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| Well Cottage, Stoke Row |
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| Me in front of the well |
Stoke Row’s village store now incorporates a café, where we stopped for an ice cream – we would have had a cup of tea but were a bit nervous for our bladders (the store doesn’t have a toilet and there’s not much else in the vicinity).
We left Stoke Row via a footpath that eventually came out on Uxmore Road in Checkendon. After a little way along this road we turned left by the former 'Four Horseshoes' pub (now closed) along Deer’s Lane, another ‘Quiet Lane’. We stayed on this lane, past Hook End Farm, to return to the van.
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| The now-closed Four Horseshoes at Checkendon |
Map of the route:
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