I think I joined the Ramblers towards the end of the lockdown era, probably fired up with some desire to do some regular group activities, as well as discovering some new footpaths I wouldn’t have discovered by myself. However, although I’ve been enjoying receiving the quarterly magazine, with its invaluable sock rash tips, as at the start of 2024 I’d only actually been out on two walks, a pleasant ‘Caversham Byways’ walk with the Pang Valley group, in January 2022, and then another walk in September 2022 with the ‘Berkshire Weekend Walkers’, a rather faster-paced 10-mile country route from Kintbury via Inkpen (written up by the walk leader here as walk 537). But that’s managed to be it.
 |
| Copies of 'Walk', the Ramblers' quarterly magazine |
The organization now seems to be known just as the ‘Ramblers’. Perhaps they felt the ‘Association’ bit was offputting for today’s younger folk - not that I have so far been on a Ramblers walk that included anyone much under about 45. I note in fairness that among the Berkshire groups there is one specifically for people in their 20s and 30s, which is probably a good idea in terms of attracting younger people - I don't suppose in my twenties I'd have wanted to go walking with a bunch of elderlies, much as you do meet some very interesting older people in the Ramblers.
Anyway, in a fit of New Year re-evaluating life/banging head against table etc, I decided I would try and make more use of my membership and actually get out for more group walks. The walk I chose was a gentle start, billed as ‘Leisurely’ and a modest length of only four and a half miles. This was a walk around Earley and Lower Earley, with the Mid Berks group. Lower Earley is an enormous housing development on the SE edge of Reading, apparently reckoned to be the largest private housing development in the UK at the time it was developed in the 80s/90s. (Indeed, this Wikimapia page reckons it was the biggest in western Europe, but it's hard to verify these sorts of stats.) I lived there for a year in the early 1990s in a rented house share with my sister Hannah. Here I am in the doorway of the house we rented (I appear to be wearing just a shirt and tights, but I suspect I had a short skirt on – ah, far off youth). It was quite a nice house and a pleasant enough area.
 |
| Me outside our rented house in Beighton Close, Lower Earley |
For this walk we met in a car park by Chalfont Park in Lower Earley, near the Asda complex. I turned up early – having chosen to get the bus and therefore been limited to its timings – and a youngish (40s) chap also waiting in the car park eventually sidled up to me and we established that we were both there for the walk. Eventually around 10-12 people turned up for the walk, led by a spry 70-something lady called Jean, who has lived in the Earley area around 50 years and therefore seen the whole Lower Earley development be built up. She was able to tell us lots of interesting stuff including niche stuff such as which footpaths used to be through roads, which is exactly the sort of info I like.
We started off by walking past Asda and out onto Elm Lane, one of several former roads that are now no longer through routes for cars. Then crossed Rushey Way and proceeded partly along paths and partly along quiet estate roads to the Laurel Park recreation ground, which we walked along the edge of and then into the Maiden Erlegh Nature Reserve, which includes a lake. I assume that this nature reserve was originally part of the grounds of Maiden Erlegh House.
 |
| Maiden Erlegh Lake |
After the lake we turned back towards Lower Earley, taking in Radstock Lane, another former road now partly footpath. Towards the end of the walk we did a circuit of Redhatch Copse and walked through the newish housing that’s been built on the site of the former Sibly Hall, one of Reading University’s halls of residence and somewhere I lived for a term while I was studying there in the 1990s (being on some sort of quest for the first half of that decade of pointlessly moving house as often as possible). Sibly was a somewhat bleak building that rose like some sort of beacon among the sea of housing that surrounded it. It was demolished around ten years ago and the company responsible posted a video on YouTube of the demolition - somewhat tastelessly to my mind, but I guess they need to advertise their services.
 |
| Another view of the lake |
Definitely felt afterwards as though I'd taken part in some constructive activity/mixing, so we'll see if this continues.
Route of the walk:
No comments:
Post a Comment