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West Berkshire, Former Berkshire, & HampshireWalk Details: Top details: Top details: |
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The Walk:There had been a lot of discussion last night about which tops to bag today. The "flatlands" of Suffolk, Essex & Cambridgeshire had been considered, and had in fact won a toss of the coin, but eventually rejected on the grounds of being to far to travel in these short winter daylight hours. Given the forecast of fog, I didn't really want to do Walbury Hill - I'd rather have saved its grand views for a clear day. However, given that it was close and we already had the relevant OS map out of the library (from 2 weeks ago when we completed Whitehorse Hill and Liddington Castle) we ended up choosing Walbury Hill anyway. As Pilot Hill is only a short distance along the ridge from Walbury Hill, it made sense to combine the two into a circular walk. After getting very confused over both scale and units of measurements and accidentally planning a 22 mile walk, I recalculated and plotted a more sedate 8 mile walk that took us down off the north face of the ridge and would hopefully give us good views back towards the hills. We parked in one of the public "car parks" (actually a rutted, pot-holed gravel trap at the side of the road) near the top of Walbury Hill, and were informed by a nearby sign that it was the highest chalk down in Britain too. Walbury Hill must be positively reeling under the weight of so many accolades! There was a lot of low cloud, and we could only just espy the fields at the foot of the steep hill edge. We decided to walk the lower part of the circular walk first, and hope that the cloud had lifted or burnt off by the time we returned to the ridge, thus giving us better views. So it was that the quest for our next county top started off with us heading steeply downhill on a road away from the top! We left the road through a "former" wood - all the trees in the centre had been cut down whilst leaving the ones around the edge. Perhaps the farmer was trying to disguise the devastation he'd wreaked? Heading out into open farmland, there was another strange wood to our right - a perfectly round copse in the middle of the field. Reaching Park House the path took an annoying dog-leg around the corner of the field and then joined a track leading to Highwood Farm. It would have been nice to go straight on at the farm on a track that lead past the farmhouse itself and would have cut off a big corner of the walk. Unfortunately the track was private, so we had to go the long way round on a public track which eventually joined a minor road which we followed for a mile into the village of East Woodhay, crossing into Hampshire on the way. It seemed strange walking from Berkshire into Hampshire. Hampshire makes me think of the south coast, Portsmouth and the like. Berkshire feels like a mere adjunct of suburban London - they just seem too far apart to have a concurrent boundary! You might think that this long period of winding paths and road walking in the "lowlands" would have got us down, but not a bit of it. We were both in the mood for walking, and it was great just being in the open air again. The roads were uncannily quiet (in fact, we didn't see one vehicle on this stretch of road!). The low cloud didn't reach down this far, but swirled spookily along the top of the ridge towering dramatically above us - a fine sight which we eagerly anticipated ascending. We stopped for lunch on a bench in the churchyard in East Woodhay. This was quite moving - the bench had been partially funded by the schoolchildren of the village, in memory of a young lady whose grave it faced. Despite her death being a year ago, the grave was festooned with flowers, and we wondered if she had been the kid's teacher. It's always a sad and sobering experience to see a grave of someone who died young. It bought back memories of the mountaineer's graveyard in Zermatt, full of young people who'd died attempting to climb the Matterhorn, and reminded us that one day we'd be encountering county tops far more dangerous than the gentle chalk slopes of south east England.
Bearing off on a footpath past an almost fairytale mansion (marked on the map as "Stargrove"), we then turned onto a track and finally started to make our ascent to the ridge. The track got increasingly steep (but never difficult) before rejoining the road. We almost immediately turned off on the Wayfarer's Walk along the top of the ridge. We were almost disappointed that what had looked like such forbidding hillsides from East Woodhay had turned out to be such an easy climb. Maybe we're getting fitter! The Wayfarer's Walk didn't live up to the second part of its name. It was now clear why all the earlier roads were so empty - all traffic drove along here instead! This "byway open to all traffic" had indeed been used by all traffic and was, at points, carved up into knee-deep mud. First of all the "Walk" passed a supremely modern house made almost entirely of glass. A wonderful piece of architecture no doubt, but you do wonder how it gained planning permission in a beautiful area like this. Walking on we ascended the upper slopes of Pilot Hill, seeing the trig point over the fields ahead and to our left. To our right we could see little of what I am sure would have been a great view - the low cloud had not lifted during our walk. We could see about as far as Stargrove, and the relative drop to there gave hints of how glorious the view could be if it weren't for the cursed cloud. The Wayfarer's Walk ran slightly down the right hand side of the ridge rather than right along the top. Therefore as we got closer to the trig point it disappeared over the crest of the hill to our left. We passed a small nature reserve surrounded by exceptionally high and strong fences, which made us wonder if the "nature" in question was lions! We assumed the trig point wouldn't be in there. Soon after the path passed a large grass field - as it contained no crops or livestock we decided it would do no harm to nip in and see if we could see the trig. The fence was high and awkward enough to make me feel I'd talk in a high pitched voice for the rest of the day. Only a few metres into the field we saw the squat shape of a trig just waiting for us to rush over for the now standard photo ceremony at the county top of Hampshire. It has to be said, especially with the cloud all around, this was just a trig in a field - there was no view whatsoever, and I think even on a clear day you'd get a better view from the path. We were happy when we returned to the path, and sang a new version of a Kinks classic: "They seek them here, they seek them there. On Pilot Hill the trig was square. On Leith Hill the trig was just a rock set in the ground. 'Cos they are dedicated followers of trig points". We followed the Wayfarers Walk down to the bottom of the col between Pilot Hill and Walbury Hill, where the mud was at its worst; our progress was drastically slowed as we had to edge our way past a series of huge puddles. After a long slow ascent which briefly took us back onto a minor road, we came to the edge of Walbury Hill.
Continuing our gentle ascent within the hill fort we were well within the clouds. We knew from the map that the trig point was away to our left down a track but had no hope of seeing it. Even when we reached the track we couldn't see it (several "sightings" subsequently moved and revealed themselves as sheep!). We weren't sure whether we were allowed down this track or not, but there were no prohibitive signs and the gate was unlocked, so in we went. The GPS pointed us in the right direction, but we'd have found the trig anyway - it was straight down the track behind a flock of sheep, although indistinguishable from the sheep through the fog until we were twenty metres or so away! With the swirling cloud all around, the sheep, and the barren openness of what we could see around us, it felt more like we were on high moorland somewhere rather than on friendly south-eastern chalk downs. Despite the lack of view, perhaps this may have made Walbury Hill more impressive than it would have been on a clear day with, no doubt, dozens of other people around. So, with the highest point of Berkshire and West Berkshire behind us
(our 7th Marilyn and 34th county top of the campaign) we headed off Walbury
Hill and back to the car, now just a few minutes walk away. It was just
as well it was so close - we were both pretty shattered. The last time
we'd done a walk this long was on the London LOOP, almost 3 months ago.
I think having moved to high speed bagging we've perhaps lost some of
the stamina we used to have!
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After lunch we left the church through a field
containing a mix of horses and llamas. I've always been slightly nervous
around horses, which always seem a bit temperamental. We got past the
horses okay, but llamas can be aggressive little buggers. We crept along
the edge of the field whilst the llamas eyeballed us belligerently, and
emerged safely onto a road.
A huge (half a mile across) iron age hill fort
sat atop Walbury Hill in times of yore (in times of your what…?!).
Despite its size, it's less visually appealing than the forts of Whitehorse
Hill and Liddington Castle. It only has a single "wall", and
this banked earthen ring is well below the crest of the hill, meaning
that you can't see across to the other side. There is therefore no feeling
of actually being "inside" the fort, and as you enter it, it
feels like nothing more than a low earth bank. The trees and bushes covering
this bank further lessen its impact.