June 8, 2006: Upper Maidensgrove to Sonning Common
An ornament of the Chiltern countryside – the copper beech
Having given Tosh a choice of starting times that lady opted for a later start (no lesson, performance, or party to get home to) and so we decided to enter the tube system at 9:00, when our Freedom Passes became valid, and to take trains after 9:30. I left the house at 8:40 and made a stop on Maida Vale parade, where I purchased materials for my lunch and, since it would be a day with temperatures in the low 80’s, some extra liquid.
I noticed that three of four other senior citizens were lurking near the turnstiles of the tube stop, like me, waiting for the magic hour. When the time came, in fact, a guard let all the 9:00 o’clock lurkers through at once. A train was just pulling in so I knew that there would be plenty of time at Paddington to buy my ticket. This was just as well because the line moved ever so slowly and when at last it was my turn I was in for a disappointment. National Rail had changed the rules and Freedom Passes, which should have been good for a free ride as far as West Drayton, were now not valid today until 10:00. At least they had to accept my Senior Rail Card and soon I was marching over to Platform 12 for the 9:33.
The train left on time and I passed forty minutes or so perusing my copy of Metro – as if Wayne Rooney’s foot were a really important story. In fact, as we passed through Ealing Broadway I saw Tosh, just coming down the staircase (I had advised the Lees that they could take a train at 9:55) and this encouraged me, during my own wait on the platform at Twyford, to see if I couldn’t get a taxi to meet our train in Henley. I had secured some numbers off the Internet but my first few attempts were thwarted by high speed trains rattling through the station and eliminating any chance that either the cab company or myself could be heard on Dorothy’s mobile phone. Eventually I succeeded in making contact with Select Cars and the cheery dispatcher (who was told to have her driver look out for “three senior walkers”) promised that a cab would be waiting at 10:54.
I then had a few minutes to wait for the Lee’s train and we then had to climb over our train line to reach the Henley halt, where a train was already waiting for us. After a short twelve-minute ride (which we had certainly taken before on our walking odyssey) we reached the famous regatta town and, sure enough, a driver was at curbside waiting for us. Our getaway would have been even smoother had it not been for the Lees, who retreated to the loos before we could get started. Our Asian driver (all the home county cabbies are Asian now, or so it seems) put our bags in his boot and we began to inch our way through Henley traffic. Our route took us through Stonor, where we had once had lunch while doing a section of the Chilterns Hundred and then we first went west and then north to reach the Five Horseshoes pub in Upper Maidensgrove. Tosh paid the cabbie £15 and he departed while I arranged my pack and began to look about for any sign of a footpath. A chap sitting in a white van across the road from the pub came over to ask if we wanted serving (it was 11:15) but he had no knowledge of the footpath I was searching for.
Today’s walk was anomalous. We were not starting off at the last spot reached on this route (Hambleden) but at a spot close to new territory for us, a southerly Chiltern Way Extension. From Hambleden to Maidensgrove the new CW is almost identical to the old CH and I therefore thought that we could skip this bit. Indeed the route westward to Ewelme is also quite close to the original Chilterns Hundred but the three day southerly extension, an afterthought to the new CW itself, would be entirely new. My task was the find the start of this extension and I had noted on the old OS sheet 175 that there seemed to be a footpath from the pub down to the valley bottom below us. I decided to look for the start of this path to the north of the pub and here it was, just a few yards away.
We hopped the first of several stiles and dropped down a rabbit-clogged hillside. I could see the track that I wished to reach in the valley bottom (for once the countryside cooperated in resembling my imagined version of this scene). And it was reassuring to have this view because half way down the hillside our path seemed to come to an end. We had reached a kind of crossing track and I tried going left first, then I turned us around and we headed right. The path obliged now by twisting downhill next to a fence line and soon we had reached the desired track. This surface was well churned by animals and would have been a misery if there had been more rain of late, but we managed to head south in shady comfort and before long we had reached the famous junction where the southern extension begins its life. We drank some water and Harold changed into his shorts. I preferred to retain my walking trousers, since there were plenty of nettles about and it wasn’t too hot at this point – though temperatures steadily advanced. For the first few miles of our walk it was cloudy above, though quite humid as a consequence.
After a brief rest we climbed a stile and headed uphill and into woodland; we followed the west side of Stocking Plantation in very pleasant countryside, with views over to our right. Reaching a lane we headed south (our dominant direction for the day) with more woodland to our left. The precincts of Soundness Farm and Lodge were the first signs (of many) that we were in affluent Oxfordshire surroundings. We reached a road and turned right on it, with views on our left of Soundness House, reputedly the home of Nell Gwynn. House and grounds seemed to be undergoing renovation. Our way hopped over a stile and followed a field path that emerged at the hamlet of Crocker End.
We turned left at the village green and crossed a bit of it on a marked bridleway, passing several nice houses before continuing along a field boundary in an easterly direction. There were more views of Nell Gwynne’s house here too. A stile brought us into Wellgrove Wood and we followed along in its shady confines until views of the valley of Bix Bottom appeared on our right. Tosh quarreled with Moon’s description of the descent as “gradual,” but we got down the hillside – with views of the walls of the ruinous Bixbrand Church on our left. We had reached a roadway and I had to change pages – a process that happened quite often – fishing out another Xerox from the confines of my map case.
We now headed south on the road for a short distance, turning right to pass Valley Farm, where the workers stared at us quizzically as they ate their lunch. A field of heavy-uddered cows was on the hillside to our left and, after passing through a gate, we climbed the hill itself – heading for another stile into another woodland. We did not cross this, however, since it was nearing 1:00 and we now decided to pause for our own lunch. The setting was quite beautiful, with the neat rows of grain and woodland on all the ridgelines. Tosh pronounced this posh countryside “manicured.” I ate a chicken and then a tuna sandwich and drank a Strawberry-tinged bottle of Volvic. Harold asked if the chocolate chip cookies Tosh had brought along came from the British Museum – “I know they have a great antiquity under any circumstance,” he added.
We were flopped on the grassy hillside for only twenty minutes or so and then we packed up and climbed into Bushy Copse. I tried to loan my map case to Harold here – just to fend off the nettles that menaced his bare legs – but he survived without it. This was again lovely walking – even though we were still climbing – and after passing into a stand of mature beech trees we emerged into open country – with a field path taking us toward some electricity pylons that served as waymarks. A stile put us out onto the A4130 in the village of Bix. To our right was the Fox pub, long defunct, mocking us in our thirst.
We crossed the highway and took an overgrown fenced path in a southerly direction, soon encountering a path along the edge of Drew Wood. We crossed a farm road on twin stiles and continued in open country, again using an electricity pole as a guidepost as we neared another drove road. The clouds had burned away by this time and we were walking directly into the sun. There was a bit of breeze but it was tough going until we were able to use a stile into Famous Copse. Here we turned east for a while, still under cover. White arrows had been painted on a number of the tall trees and these were useful in our navigation. Eventually we turned south, crossed a footbridge and headed downhill to a dip and then up to the parking lot of Grey’s Court, a National Trust property that seemed to be attracting a number of visitors today.
On this occasion I was actually carrying my National Trust membership card (the Lees are members too) though I am sure that Chiltern Way walkers are not required to pay the admission fee under any circumstances and indeed the chap at the entry kiosk waved us through. We walked by the house on a roadway anyway – though the entire building was covered in a shroud of scaffolding and no impression could be gained. I thought it brave of Tosh to pass the loos without a side trip and soon we had left these grand surroundings behind and crossed Rocky Road for another climb up into woodland. I mentioned that we were heading for the cricket ground at Greys Green and Tosh expressed the hope that someone would be selling ice cream and drinks there but, in fact, there was no match at all on a Thursday afternoon. We crossed the pitch and flopped down under a copper beech for a well-deserved rest.
Then we turned west on the village road and after rounding a corner crossed the busy street to begin a long walk along a bridleway heading in a southerly direction. There was a golf course on our right but no one was playing golf either. Surfaces were fairly level, though hard underfoot, and we made some good progress down to Cross Lanes – where the route became more wooded, though we also lost most of our views. A chap on a bicycle roared through twice, each time offering us a verbal warning as to which side of us he intended to pass. (Nevertheless he almost nicked Harold, who turned in the wrong direction just so he could hear the message.) We had another rest at one point and then continued to plod forward reaching Kings Farm and resuming a walk along a road as far as the timbered house known as Old Place.
Here we turned left, crossed the roadway and climbed up onto a bank to enter the confines of Crowsley Park. We had an uphill pull amid buttercups and then reached a crossing track where a CW arrow asked us to shift to the right. Unfortunately a half right, which we did take, seemed to correspond to the description offered in Moon, that is it followed a line of white-topped posts, but soon thereafter the instructions made no sense for we did not find the right clumps of trees nor the squeeze stile at the end. Eventually we reached a roadway – which I took to be the Sonning Common – Shiplake Road – but where we were on this road was a mystery. After I had been congratulating us on the fact that we had not put a foot wrong today I had to admit that we were now lost.
My problem was that I did not know where we were on the aforementioned road (perhaps a GPS unit would have been useful at this moment). I thought we had come out too far to the west and therefore we turned right, looking for a turnoff to Crowsley or some evidence of the red-brick Jacobean manor of Crowsley Park House. Indeed I thought I could see such an edifice to our left and so we headed east, trudging along a narrow but heavily motorized stretch of roadway. After about twenty minutes, as the road began to rise, I spotted a sign at last. We were nearing the village of Binfield Heath and thus I could at last definitively state that, without doubt, we had come the wrong way.
There was nothing to do but to turn around and retrace our steps. Tosh did plaintively mention that a taxi had just passed us by but I do have to say that there were no complaints on the part of my stalwart companions over this misstep. Tosh claimed that she had wanted to take a sharper right turn up top and that this was the only time in our walking career that she was right – and so she was. With hindsight I can see that we took the more southerly of the footpaths that descend from the top of the park – when we should have taken the more westerly. By the time we had reached our point of egress there was only a little more walking in a northwesterly direction to reach the road turnoff to Crowsley village. We were back on the Chiltern Way, though you couldn’t tell this from any waymark positioned at the critical corner. And waymarking had been pretty good today.
Some girls were riding and leading horses out of the hamlet here –curious how it’s always girls in love with horses at this young age, never lads. We passed a half-timbered thatched dwelling called Frieze Cottage and this was a sign to leave the roadway behind us and take a green lane and a path toward Morgan’s Wood. At the bottom of a field a stile crossed a ditch and then we had our last bit of uphill, encountering a gentleman with a dog at the stile into Bird Wood. In the entire day this chap was the only person encountered on our footpath, a day of eleven and a half miles (should have been ten) during which we had encountered not a single source of refreshment of any kind, pub, store or ice cream van. This was about to be remedied for the path now lead us out to a roadway where a right turn brought us up to the junction with the B481. It was 5:45 and, in spite of a website posting that listed its opening hour as 6:00, Sonning Common’s Bird in Hand was open!
We ordered our lagers (it was happy hour) and Tosh even added a package of locally produced pork scratchings. While we were enjoying the cold liquid the barman gave us a card for a Reading taxi firm (I had more numbers with me) and we were successful in engaging a cab to retrieve us in twenty-five minutes. This gave us time to use the loos, relax and catch our breaths a bit. It had been quite a strenuous day, with the heat and the humidity, and I could feel that the friction of all the walking on hard surfaces had worked us blisters on the balls of both my feet. On my belt I was wearing a pedometer that Richard Binggeli had sent me recently. I had walked 27,788 steps since leaving Upper Maidensgrove which, if I have this figured out right, meant that the little blue device had credited me with 11.84 miles – not far off my estimate of 11.5.
The cab company called me back on Dorothy’s mobile phone to confirm arrangements for our pickup while the locals chatted away about the day’s events. One of them had just bought a boat. “They say,” his pal added, “that the happiest day of a man’s life is when he buys his first boat. And the second happiest day comes when he sells it.” Pretty soon a taxi pulled into the parking lot and another Asian driver welcomed us aboard for a rush hour entry into Reading. The ride cost another £15.00
There was a long queue at the station, with only two windows open, but at last we were able to get our return tickets and head up an escalator to reach our platform. Fortunately the fast train to Paddington was late and so I was on time for it, but I had to leave the Lees behind (urging them to find out what platform to stand on for an Ealing Broadway train). The journey was only thirty minutes. I phoned Dorothy once to tell her I would get to the station about 7:20 and she phoned me once with some question about dinner. Across from me sat a country maiden on her phone, copies of Marie Claire and In Cold Blood on her tabletop. I was home, after a distinctly dilatory shuffle from the tube stop at 7:45.
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