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Oxfordshire (former top)Walk Details: Top details: The soundtrack: "Getting Wetter", almost by the Beatles. |
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The Walk:Justin was away in Boston with his folks, but given that he'd missed the last three tops we felt little remorse in knocking another one off the list while he was away. Besides, we reasoned, this one was only a former top. We had to be fairly quick on this one as we had to get down to Surrey in the evening for our cousin Christine's silver wedding anniversary. We could have made it very quick indeed, as there is a car park at the summit, but we've decided that we should try to climb to the top wherever possible. For this reason, we parked at a pub called "Ye Olde Leathern Bowl" (or possibly "Ye Olde Leathern Hotel" - the sign wasn't very clear) in the nearby village of Lewknor, where we planned to return for a drink after the walk. As soon as we marched off it started to rain - a nice light refreshing drizzle. We passed through a secretive tunnel under the M40 (it is there, honest) & into a field of randy bullocks. Having followed us hopefully for a while, they eventually gave up & started humping one another instead - much to our relief! A short and slightly scary walk along a motorway sliproad followed by a gentle ascent through woods lead us to the Ridgeway, which we followed back under the motorway. Nearby was a motorbike scrambling course, and one rider had strayed out onto the Ridgeway itself - I'm sure it won't be long before the path is chewed up. At Hill Farm we were astonished to see another walker out in the rain - "nice weather for it"-type comments were duly exchanged. Here we turned off the Ridgeway and started the proper ascent of Bald Hill. The path ran up alongside what could have been a lovely coombe, and looking back there might have been wonderful views across Oxfordshire - that is, there would have been if the rain hadn't been getting steadily heavier, making for poor visibility & a reluctance to raise oneself from a "keeping dry by staring at the ground position". The climb was surprisingly easy for our biggest county top yet - maybe the cooling rain helped. At the top we crossed a road into the aforementioned car park and headed out of the left hand end to where the highest point was supposed to be. It was pretty much flat, & hard to determine the exact highest point, but we tramped dutifully along the path until it clearly started to dip - we then knew that we must have crossed the highest point. All around the top ran a sculpture trail, and rather than taking the obligatory photo at some indeterminate point in the woods, we decided to utilise the first sculpture - a tall yellow concrete column thing (sorry, I can't think of a better description). I'm sure it symbolised something important to the artist - to us it merely symbolised a bit of shelter from the now heavy rain.
After leaving (and singing "Triggy triggy triggy, point point point" for no good reason) we rapidly descended through a different coombe, navigated around a small hill called "The Knapp" and returned to base camp. We felt far too soggy to go to the pub (preferring instead to return home for hot baths and soup), so I'd like to make a public apology to Ye Olde Leathern Whatever for stealing their parking space. Over-riding memories of this one? A strange sculpture and lots of rain. I'm sure it'd be lovely on a sunny day though…
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We
still had one further task to carry out - to visit the nearby trigpoint.
Even though this was not at the highest point (a couple of metres lower
and half a mile away). Fom the map we assumed this was at the roadside,
but it turned out to be on the other side of the hedge and about 20 metres
into a field - surely inconvenient for surveyors, the farmer and trigpoint-baggers
alike?! I can confirm that it looked like every other trigpoint I've ever
seen, although it's weight had caused a metre or so's subsidence in the
field below - surely making readings from this trigpoint inaccurate?