Introduction.

One of the problems with agreeing to meet other people in a place you’ve never been to before is that there is a certain degree of ambiguity over exactly where to meet and what the parking situation is. So it was that we first saw Justin’s MG heading north out of Streatley, when Jim and I were heading south into the village. Jim and I quickly found a roadside parking spot from which we could ring Cat and enquire as to where they were headed. She said they’d been unable to find any parking in Streatley. We politely informed them that there was loads and they just needed to try a bit harder. We eventually met up, and leaving Justin’s car there all drove in my Corsa up to today’s starting point, the remote and rutted car park at Streatley Firs.

Looking at the book in advance, it appeared that this would be one of the most remote and featureless sections of the trail. The maps showed little evidence of modern human occupation between here and Streatley, and Jim had morosely remarked that it looked like a long old trudge. We wondered how Justin and Cat would cope with this one.

Sparsholt Firs to Segsbury Castle

At least the weather was clement. Bright sun shone as we started walking, and there was no chance this time of Jim and I starting the day with a game of ice cricket. Instead we started the day with the same view of Didcot power station that I had had omitted to mention at the end of the previous section. It was to be a dominant and ever present feature for much of today.

The trail began looking much the same as it had for the first two days’ walking – a broad, fairly straight, fairly level flinty track offering exceptionally easy walking beneath big open skies. The views to the north were impressive, with a deep coombe cutting into the hillside below us and – you guessed it – that there power station jutting up in the distance. To the right was a reminder that the Lambourne Downs are one of the great centres of racehorse breeding in Britain – an area cleared for “gallops” (we idly wondered if this was what you got when you ate dodgy food in Egypt, as opposed to the mere trots you get from, say, a British kebab house?). After a short while the unchanging view got a bit samey, and with the trail itself presenting no mental challenge, our minds started to seek other ways of occupying themselves.

It was Justin who started it. For some reason he started to relate an apparently true story that if you cross a lion with a tiger you get a twelve-foot beast that’s more gentle than a domestic cat (apparently sometimes, just for variety, you get a miniature killing machine!). This led into a discussion of what the most unusual crossbreed would be, which I felt I won with my “centipigeon”.

We returned to contemplation of the trail as we approached the fourth major iron age fort on the Ridgeway. Despite greedily claiming two names, Segsbury Castle (aka Letcombe Castle) was nowhere near as impressive as its counterparts at Barbury, Liddington and Uffington. Nevertheless, its small single earth rampart provided an ideal place for our first break of the day. Jim and I headed straight up to it; Jus & Cat followed us after a brief friendly liaison with the horses of Segsbury Farm.

Segsbury Castle to Scutchamer Knob (snigger)

It was very pleasant lying there in the sun, and I for one didn’t want to move. Eventually the others forced me to return to the trail. The Ridgeway itself seemed to have undergone a metamorphosis. Gone were the barren empty slopes; for a while at least the path was a picture of spring, with daffodils and violets peeping out from beneath the trees that now lined the path.

We passed a semi-detached house with a hugely impressive arched hedge entrance and emerged onto the spookily quiet A338. A little further down the road a youth hostel was marked on the map; if you were through-hiking, it would be a long days’ march to reach here from the last realistic accommodation option in Ogbourne St George. It was quite astonishing that, in the populous south of England, a trail could offer this sort of remoteness.

Our route didn’t take us to the youth hostel; instead we continued straight across the road and on down the Ridgeway. The path passed some houses before winding past White House Farm, which should probably have been renamed “Smokers’ Yellow House Farm” due to the faded paint. A short while later the Ridgeway passed an ancient tumulus that had been sadly desecrated by tire tracks passing over the top. Admittedly here was also a rabbit warren dug into one side, but at least the couple of rabbits we saw weren’t ruining the tranquillity of the Ridgeway with large engines.

From the tumulus you can make out a monument ahead (not to be confused with the ‘phone mast to the south-east). Having seen it, it seemed to take an inordinately long time to actually reach the blasted thing, and through some bizarre trick of perspective it seemed to get smaller as we approached it.

When we eventually reached the monument we realised it wasn’t a trick of perspective; the column was actually shorter than your average monument. Unusually though, it was surmounted by a large metal cross. An inscription around the base dedicated the monument to the Baron of Wantage for his services in the Crimean War. From the plinth of the monument there’s a fine view of Didcot Power Station (although I’m not sure “fine” is the right word!), but there was also a bit of a cold breeze and so we moved on quickly.

The next bit of the trail offered little in the way of diversion, and we continued to look at the power station. As clouds passed overhead, the giant cooling towers would gradually change from a bright sunlit cream to a dull overcast grey, and Jim and I passed some time trying to guess when this would happen: “Now… no, now… any minute now”, etc.

From here the conversation returned naturally (!!) to big cats. Justin said about the cheetah being the fastest animal in the world; we then said that having run so fast the cheetah might be a bit knackered, and might not have the energy left to kill its prey. We felt that it might help the cheetah to have a snout-mounted spike, which it could just use to spear the unfortunate antelope. Speculation then mounted as to how said antelope could avoid such a lethal attack, and the preferred method was for the antelope to run in front of a tree, thus leaving the cheetah nailed to the trunk. We all had the vision in our minds of African explorers discovering a grove of trees, each decorated with a (slightly compressed) cheetah skeleton. “Narwhals are the cheetahs of the sea, I suggested. “But how do they get the fish they spear off of their horn?” asked Jim. The whole conversation proved little other than that your brain turns to mush whilst long distance walking!

I’d spotted a curious feature ahead in the guidebook, and annoyed Jim inordinately by repeatedly singing “Scutchamer’s Knob” to the tune of “Batchelors Hall” by Steeleye Span. The guide said that the most popular theory was that this was the grave of the Saxon King Cwicchelm, but on the OS map it appeared to just be another tumulus, one of many that we’d seen on the Ridgeway. We therefore weren’t expecting much.

It was therefore something of a surprise to enter a rare patch of woodland and see a small hill looming at us through the trees. It caused us such a shock that we completely forgot to look out for the trig point nearby. This was indeed a tumulus fit for a king! The summit would have made quite a nice place for lunch, but Jus & Cat pointed out that we weren’t quite halfway yet, and said it would be demoralising to have more than half of the walk left after lunch. We therefore pushed onwards.

Scutchamer Knob to Streatley

The next bit of trail was one of the most miserable yet. We’d come to think of the Ridgeway as a pleasant little country track wandering along the crest of the downs. Suddenly and without warning it turned into a motorway; still a track, but spread across a width of over 100 feet. We could walk four abreast and have to shout to make ourselves heard to the others. It was in a word ugly, and it felt like a very long trudge across the next page or two of the guidebook.

Part of the problem was probably that it was a long time since our last break and I was longing for my lunch – especially as I had some rather nice and most un-walker like smoked salmon sandwiches in my pack! The Ridgeway had so far seemed to have a general lack of benches; I felt that the only place that we might find to sit and eat, miserable though the place would probably be, was somewhere round about the concrete underpass where the trail goes under the A34.

As it turned out there was fortunately nowhere to sit under the A34, and we eventually partook of our lunch sat at the side of the trail with our legs dangling into a newly dug drainage ditch. It was not the most glamorous of locations, and it took three attempts before we even managed to sit there – Jim rejected the first proposed site due to ants, and the second one was not grassy enough for Cat.

Black clouds had been threatening on the horizon as we ate; as we started walking again the temperature plummeted, the wind picked up and it started to rain. A cold front was in the air. Fortunately the wind was from behind us and the rain was more refreshing than heavy. Better still the trail motorway finally ended.

I’d been warning everyone of an impending left turn for most of the day. After miles of straight on, I felt it’d be easy to miss, but we spotted it straight away. This new path was a big improvement on what had gone before; a pleasant chalky track winding its way down the hill past gallops with brush fences. At the bottom the trail bridged a disused railway line. The scene was marred by huge quantities of fly tipping. Why would someone drive all the way down this rough track to dump their washing machines and the like when they could no doubt more easily take it to their local tip? We had clearly entered the south-east.

We now hit the only real uphill stretch of what had been a very level day’s walking. Whilst never even slightly steep, it did go on for a demoralisingly long way. Justin, Jim and I cheered kept ourselves going up the first bit of the hill by picking brassica leaves from the edge of a field and feeding them into the back of Cat’s rucksack. About halfway up we thought we’d taken the wrong turn; a parallel route slightly to the north had traffic prohibition signs that looked just like the ones we’d got used to on the Ridgeway. A quick glance at the GPS reassured us that we were in the right place though. Further on a couple of kids raced past on their bikes before tiring themselves on the hill. As they got off to push their bikes, it must have been slightly galling for them to be re-overtaken by us.

Eventually we reached the top, and stopped for our last water break of the day near the entrance to Warren Farm. From here on it was downhill into the Thames valley, all the way to Streatley and the car. There was quite a startling transition in the path here. Until now the trail had been generally very open, but now we started to descend through the longest stretch of woodland we’d yet seen – a sure sign of what was to come once we crossed the Thames and entered the Chiltern Hills. The soil seemed different too – the poor flinty chalk of the North Wessex Downs replaced by a richer loam. The rain stopped, and violets serenaded us from the edge of the path. A flash of bright orange in the distance resolved into a man wearing a virulent poncho, something of a cross between a giant traffic cone and a waterproof ghost.

Nearing the bottom of the hill we passed another Warren Farm – I’d have thought it would have been confusing having two farms with such similar names so close together. This one was rather beautiful, the farm and its outbuildings looking like a little rural idyll. Here the path joined a road for the remaining mile and a half into Streatley. Jim and I remembered only too well from the LOOP how much tarmac could hurt your feet, and groaned inwardly at the prospect. For Justin and Cat this had been their longest ever day’s walking, and the long stint on tarmac just about finished them off.

Jim and Cat sloped off to a rather nice pub called The Bull in Streatley while Jus & I piled into his MG to go and collect my car from the start. Just as we were about to head off a voice hailed us from a passing spacewagon – astonishingly it was our workmate Mark and his family!

It seemed a hell of a long drive to get my car – it took over an hour and made us realise just how far we’d come. At least part of the reason for the length of the journey was that – as we realised once Justin started following me back – the MG speedo was calibrated incorrectly and thus Justin was only actually doing two thirds of the speed he thought he was. Compared to all the other things that have gone wrong with or fallen off of his car, a broken speedo must have seemed like light relief!

By the time we returned to the pub Jim and Cat were onto their second pint, and apparently Cat has spent most of the intervening time saying that her legs hurt and she was never going to walk seventeen miles again. We were now at the halfway point, and our views of the trail hadn’t changed much from on the first two days. It had been pleasant and very easy walking with nice views for much of the way, and a fair few historical sights to investigate (although their had been less of those today). What the Ridgeway really seemed to lack was variety – if we were now dropped at a random point on the first half of the trail we would probably struggle to distinguish which part we were on. We were all looking forward to crossing the Thames next time, and maybe getting a bit of a change as we moved up into the Chilterns.

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