“Midgham Meander” with the Berkshire Weekend Walkers, 10 miles

Saturday 31 August

The Berkshire Weekend Walkers are a local Ramblers group. BWW’s average age seems to be younger than the other Ramblers groups I’ve been out with – probably around my own. They do note on their website that their group is primarily for people of working age and therefore focuses on weekend walks, in contrast to at least one of the other groups I've walked with who have a preponderance of older walkers and have their main walk of the week on a weekday.

This walk started from Midgham station car park (the station, as pedantically noted before, is in Woolhampton not Midgham, though the walk did take in Midgham village). I had pondered taking the train, before discovering they only run once an hour on Saturdays and I didn’t fancy potentially sitting on the station for up to an hour after having tramped for 10 miles. I decided against driving as Midgham station car park is not very big (it was indeed more or less full by the time I arrived) so got the excellent Reading Buses’ “jet black” number 1 service that runs twice an hour between Reading and Newbury.

The walk was well attended – around 14 people turned out for it – and led by a woman called Ruth with whom I had exchanged texts a couple of days before. We started out by walking along the A4 for a short way eastwards and, a bit bafflingly, turned into a garage forecourt. Turns out there’s a footpath leading off from the rear of this up a hill – it’s clear enough from the OS map but not at all obvious on the ground; I'm guessing Ruth must have done a bit of scrambling around to find it while checking out the route. She said that on the recce the path had been very overgrown and she had contacted West Berkshire Council about it – kudos to them as it had been cleared by the time of our walk. In this Street View image, the path heads off to the left of the white van in the back of the picture. In the snip below it from OS Explorer 159, the path can be seen going up between the 'h' and the 'a' of the Woolhampton village label.

The path’s a pleasanter (now that it’s been cleared) alternative to walking up Woolhampton Hill, which turns in off the A4 by the former Falmouth Arms. The path comes out onto the road alongside the grounds of Elstree School. At the top of the hill, the road comes to a T-junction by the former Douai School. We headed up the footpath to the right of the school and walked through Greyfield Wood to come out at Chapel Row. Here there's a pub - the Bladebone - and a café, the Blackbird Café, which someone said was nice. From some Google research it looks as though it’s occupying the former village shop. We walked along the road for a bit before turning in to some woods at a sign to Scotland Corner.

Ramblers crossing a field

Ramblers approaching Bucklebury

After the woods we crossed some countryside and then in to Bucklebury. We walked through part of Bucklebury Farm where there was much cooing over goats, alpacas etc. Just past this, we walked up a hill where Ruth suggested pausing for lunch to make the most of the view. We all whipped out our sit mats in unison and sat down. I was perturbed to find myself getting down onto the ground somewhat less nimbly than the woman next to me, who looked around the 70 mark. This sort of thing is part of the reason for the expensive stint of 1 to 1 personal training I am currently partaking in and may or may not blog about.

Pony at Bucklebury Farm

Coming up to the top of the hill above Bucklebury Farm

Saw this weird fungus in woodland passed through on this walk. What's all that about?

Fungus or poss alien life form

At Upper Bucklebury we stopped at the Cottage Inn for a drink and loo stop – in fact suspect the former was a thinly veiled excuse for the latter, though the drink was also enjoyable. After leaving the pub, we walked south from Upper Bucklebury via Blacklands Copse. The latter stages of the walk took in Midgham Park, where several of us admired what we could see of the house.

A couple of the group had brought secateurs on the walk, presumably to trim any rogue footpath overgrowth – in the event we didn't encounter too much, but one of the chaps in front of me did trim a few bramble fronds out of the way at one point, perhaps just to make it worth while having brought the tools.

Route below showing start and finish at Midgham station. The BWW's Scrapbook of Previous Walks page has a write up here (as walk 656).