Walk near Woolhampton, 4 miles

Sunday 31 January

A Socially Distanced Walk With One Other Person, as per government guidelines. The issue of what counts as your ‘local area’ seems to have become rather a vexed question, and I had been a bit put off, as I’m sure many people were, by reported incidents of police overreach, as per this one in Derbyshire which does seem to have subsequently resulted in a police apology.

Frankly I’m not sure what was subsequently decided on, if anything. Anyway, I was wary of driving the whole way over to Kintbury to meet up with Ray for a walk, so we decided to meet at Woolhampton as being roughly halfway between our two homes. We parked at a deserted Midgham station and headed north across the Bath Road and up Woolhampton Hill. We passed Elstree School and St Peter’s Church. My fascination with long-abandoned gates continues.

Old gates

St Peter's Church, Woolhampton

At the top of Woolhampton Hill is the former Douai School. The school closed in the late 1990s and the site was sold to Bewley Homes. The school building has been converted into housing and it's surrounded by new building in a similar style. 

The former Douai School

We followed a footpath passing to the right of the development and then round the back, and then crossing a field towards High Wood. Things got very boggy at the junction of paths here and we turned to follow the path to the left coming out back on the road near Upper Farm.

Path across fields

Bogginess

Ray was wearing a pair of Muck wellingtons for the walk, which looked just the thing. Resolved to order myself a pair though haven't got around to it yet.

We decided to stick to roads as far as possible for the remainder of the walk. We followed the road round and along Carbinswood Lane, and then turned down New Road Hill. We stopped at Midgham Green and sat on a bench to have a cup of tea and some biscuits, which was definitely not a picnic. After this we continued down the hill back to the station.

Short stop at Midgham Green

Midgham station is in Woolhampton, not Midgham, but was allegedly renamed because of confusion with Wolverhampton, though I'm not sure I believe that. Midgham village is a bit further west.

Mum and Dad lived in Woolhampton for a while when they first moved to Berkshire in the 1960s. When I spoke with them via Zoom after this walk, they shared a memory of pushing me in my pram up Woolhampton Hill to church at Douai Abbey (Dad was impolite enough to recall that it had been a bit of a struggle). This walk didn't get us much of a view of the Abbey - I think the last time I went there was with Mum to Midnight Mass probably sometime in the 1990s. I was christened there in 1968.

Our route in red below, showing start and end points by the railway in Woolhampton.