September 28, 2006: Sonning Common to Goring

Having resumed our walking regime only the week before, the Lees and I agreed that we would return to the Chiltern Way on a cloudy grey early autumn Thursday, this week’s most likely setting for a dry period of walking, and one of those rare few days not pre-booked by Tosh.

Because we were travelling some distance away from London, however, I suggested that we needed an earlier start than that permitted by our various travel passes – and Tosh agreed. I then rebelled against paying three or four pounds for a two station ride to Paddington and decided it was time, after twenty-five years in the neighborhood, to see if I couldn’t find an expeditious way to walk to the station. On the day before our hike, therefore, I set out to find a southerly passage, taking into consideration that if I just headed toward Antarctica I wouldn’t be far off. I checked my watch and strode out, descending Morshead and Castellaine, sliding to the right of the Warwick Avenue tube station, continuing on to the motorway exit, turning right through a pavement construction site and backtracking one block to a set of stairs that lead down to the canal. Here I turned right and walked along the canal into Paddington Central, the huge new office and housing complex whose presence, I reasoned, must certainly lead to a useful route into the station itself. Almost immediately there were signs pointing toward my goal.

I passed a Starbucks on my right and soon found a cobbled alleyway that lead, in very short order, to London Street, where the all too familiar sight of St. Mary’s A&E department loomed on the left. I had only to round a corner to approach Praed Street and a right turn here lead me directly onto the concourse of the station. It had taken me twenty-seven minutes.

I made some inquiries at advanced booking and bought a ticket for the next day. Then I retraced my route, stepping up the pace in an effort to see if I could better my time. By the time I had reached home I had shaved another minute off my time – and, not surprisingly (given my lack of vigorous exercise recently, I had pulled a muscle in the back of my left leg. This injury, hopefully treated with some radiant unguent, was still nagging the next morning when, at 7:55, I began a second walk toward the station, this time intending to actually use a train.

I stopped at the Nosh store and bought some cashews, nibbling some of these as I walked, and utilizing a far more casual pace. This time I took a road out to London Street, instead of the cobbled alleyway, and noticed that there was a back entrance into the station itself. This I used, no doubt saving another minute or two, arriving in time to order a small cappuccino from the Delice de France stall before boarding a Swansea train which, inquiries proved, I was entitled to use with my fully-paid single.

There was plenty of room aboard this posh train (the first three cars I passed were all first class) and we left on time, 8:45. I had finished my coffee and endured only a few business calls from my fellow passengers by the time we pulled into Reading at 9:10.

I had made arrangements with the Lees to meet them in front of the station, where I had spotted a well-supplied taxi rank the last time we were here. They were due in at 9:10 also, having taken a slow train from Ealing Broadway, but I waited for ten minutes with no sign of them. I was thinking of calling them on my mobile phone (which we both carry now) when they turned up – their train had been late. They headed off for the loos, then joined me in the swift-moving taxi queue and the ubiquitous Asian driver soon showed up to take us the four miles or so north to Sonning Common, where I had him pull into the parking lot of the Bird in Hand. As I paid I explained that we were not heavy drinkers, only walkers who had broken off our route here last time.

I made some adjustments to my pack, depositing here both my phone and my redundant sun glasses, and arranging my map case with the old OS map and Xeroxed sheets of the relevant pages from Nick Moon’s guidebook. At 9:47 we were ready to begin what I expected to be an eleven-mile day.

We crossed the B481 and used a gate to penetrate the green of Sonning Common. Here we took to gravel paths, soon escaping to our left and reaching the street that runs along the south side of the common. We turned right, reached a t-junction and turned left on the verge of Kennylands Road. A short distance to the south we could see a stile, on the opposite side, admitting us to a series of field paths. Our instruction was to aim toward the left-hand end of a building at Chalkhouse Green Farm and this we did, passing a copse on our right called Cucumber Plantation, presumably because of its shape rather than its vegetation. There were low bushy crops at our feet but we never figured out what they were and I suggested to Tosh that she needed to write a vegetable guide to go with the usual tree, flower and bird books.

After passing the farm and its gardens we reached Chalkhouse Green Lane and followed its paved surface round a bend and past a row of houses. We passed several road junctions before abandoning our lane for the unpaved Dysonswood Lane, which we followed around a left-hand bend as it descended into a valley bottom. My leg was giving me problems, but I was not actually limping, and I could maintain a normal pace, though Tosh was usually fifty yards ahead of Harold and me. Every now and the she would turn around to ask what she should be looking for. “After a third of a mile, look for a sharp uphill turn to the right,” I would say. Our lane did now climb, fairly gently, becoming paved itself as we returned to civilization on the outskirts of the hamlet of Toker’s Green.

Here a woman was asking her neighbor if she knew who belonged to a red car. She was curious, she said, because there had been a burglary next door. Tosh, overhearing this, hastened to explain that we weren’t burglars. “They broke into the chap’s house next door,” the woman continued, “but they never bothered with me. Of course I do have ten dogs.”

We passed a small green and I pulled my compass out to make sure we were taking the right direction (west) on Rokeby Drive. On this day of high cloud and no sun it was often hard for me have a sense of what direction we were heading and I had to use the compass a lot. We reached the A4074 and made a brief jog to the left before penetrating a hedge to continue in a westerly direction across a field. Somewhere along here I spotted two adjacent signs on a pole; together they summed up country culture – for one advertised the delights of the local paint ball enterprise and the second the charms of the Caversham charity ball.

We passed to the south end of Currs Copse and reached the Goring Heath Road, turning left for a few yards before turning right onto Newell’s Lane and descending to a corner with a golf course on our right. Again this lead to an uphill contination and a series of paths in territory dominated by explosions of pheasants at every turn. We walked along the edge of a copse called Noke End Shaw and reached Rose Farm – where a concrete track lead us by one of those ancient granaries perched on staddle stones. On our left we were now getting distant views of the Thames valley, with Tilehurst in immediate evidence. I had been listening recently to the Brahms symphonies and these were in my head all day long.

Ahead we could see the borders of one of the many stretches of woodland that dominated the route today. In this case we had Park Wood to cross on a wide track before descending the hillside just after passing a hissing electric cable at our feet. The Lees were now spotting stately piles across the Thames and wanting me to identify these but there was no help in the guidebook and I didn’t feel like getting the OS map out. Our path degenerated somewhat in hillside scrubland but we reached an advertised folly and dropped down to a field full of cows.

We hopped over stiles to cross this green space and turned right to walk behind Mapledurham House and thus reach the village church and the lodge and mill houses. Here we turned right and headed uphill to a white house where a bridleway allowed us to continue our way westward. This was a long stretch but there were good views over the field to our left. When the last of the grass came to an end we were invited to climb a stile and chug steeply uphill to the edge of woodland, Westfordhill Copse. Undoubtedly this was the steepest pull of the day but there was a reward at the top, where I found Tosh sprawled in the grass – for behind us there was a striking panoramic view.

Moon says, “Just inside the wood cross a stile and follow a waymarked path straight on, soon becoming path WH5 and joining a wider track.” In fact it was a small gate that admitted us to woodland at this point but a path did lead on to a wider track and so we passed into the large embrace of Bottom Wood – where there was no waymarking of any kind. (Only Moon would know what number a country path carried; such designations were never in evidence even when there were waymarks.) The longer we walked however, the more uneasy I was becoming over the line of march, which seemed to be westerly (or so my compass said) while we should have been heading north by northwest. At a fork I even got out the OS map but there seemed to be only one track through this wood and we were already on it.

After a further ten minutes we approached a lorry where a man was cutting branches of laurel and here we stopped to chat. He said he cut the plants every year because of the Jewish New Year, the leaves being in great demand at about this time of year. I was somewhat puzzled by this suggestion (the New Year having been celebrated the previous weekend) but the mystery was cleared up when, later, I checked my copy of What Is A Jew? in order to discover that we were only ten days or so away from Succoth, the Feast of Tabernacles, during which outdoor huts are constructed with such foliage.

The conversation was not much more enlightening when I asked our gardener where we were, and how we were most likely to reach the vicinity of Collins End. He agreed that we weren’t that far away and offered a long list of right and left turns that might get us there but there was no way we could remember all this and we had to content ourselves with heading off in the dominant direction, which seemed to be northwest again, and trying to make our escape from the forest itself on woodland roads. This we did without further difficulty and I had high hopes that the cottages and farmsteads we were encountering were those of Collins End – but when we reached the end of our road I discovered that we were in Path Hill instead. We had come much too far to the west, completely overshooting our noontime pub turnoff.

While I was considering options a brief shower began and we took refuge in a bit of woods where we put on our rain jackets. There were signs about indicating a path to Collins End but I was not sure if these indications could be trusted. The irony is that had we brought food with us we could simply have continued with the Chiltern Way, which we had re-encountered here at Path Hill. But we had been planning on a pub lunch (and Tosh had been complaining of hunger for the last few miles) and so I was determined to reach our destination, even if it meant backtracking. I also decided that, to be completely safe, we would use roads – since a roadway route is pictured on Moon’s map and I was at last certain where we were.

My loyal troops lined up behind me and we headed northeast to the hamlet of Goring Heath, dropping down into a side valley and then climbing steeply uphill. At a crossroads we turned southeast and, without much traffic to bother us, reached a bit of dark wood where I discovered the footpath we should have been using to get from Collins End to the King Charles Head pub, now just ahead of us and across the street on the same Goring Heath Road we had briefly used a couple of hours earlier. We were much relieved to reach this pub. It was now 1:30, not the 12:30 I had hoped for, and I knew that the necessity of completing a large circle east of Path Hill would turn this walk into a thirteen mile trek, not one of eleven miles as planned.

We were ushered to a table in the dining room and here we had our drinks and ordered our food from the hostess. I drank a Diet Coke and Harold joined me in an unAtkinsonian fish, chips, salad and peas. Tosh ordered the Beef Bourguignon which, she said, reminded her of the 70”s – though they had added too many ingredients for Julia Child, including hunks of bacon. The chef in his black and white checkered pantaloons was visiting a nearby table with a new menu, one which would replace the current one next week. I told Tosh that this would really consign her meal to the bin of history. I had been wearing my rain jacket over my sweatshirt and my sweatshirt over my t-shirt ever since Path Hill and I was wringing wet, even though the rain itself had stopped almost immediately.

I had dried off a bit by the time we had finished our coffees and used the loos but when I went out back to retie my boots I discovered that the seam of one shoe had rotted through and that these old friends (well, not that old, since I had bought them in 2003) would have to be replaced. It was about 2:15 that we hit the road again.

This time we used footpaths, utilizing Moon’s map when possible. There were footpath signs inviting a westerly progress but there wasn’t much evidence of a real path as we crossed bits of greensward and scrub and, at a road, I had to do some scouting before choosing a gravel track. At the end of this we encountered a CW sign, having reached the north end of the elusive Collins End and I was soon able to return to Moon’s text as well. We used stiles and field paths to drop to a valley bottom and then to climb steeply uphill to penetrate woodland. I told the Lees that I had a strong suspicion that this was the same piece of woods that we had taken refuge in when it had started to rain and so it proved to be. We had reached Path Hill and still had another 4.6 miles to go.

Still maintaining our westerly trod we used field paths and gravel lanes to make steady progress. A friendly sheep dog, accompanied by two women, ran up to greet us on this stretch – it was the only time in the entire day’s outing that we met anyone else using our trail, though they were unlikely to be Chiltern Way walkers. Farm roads now lead us up to cottages on the outskirts of the village of Whitchurch Hill, where we reached a highway and turned right to pass the lych gate of the St. John the Baptist Church. After passing the Goring Heath Parish Hall we crossed the road to follow a concrete road toward Beech Farm. I did some figuring later and determined that Whitchurch Hill marked Tosh’s 2600^th mile on British footpaths. As we passed a cottage soon thereafter that lady spotted a “help yourself” sign next to a fig tree – and so she did, pronouncing the fruit delicious.

We now crossed some fields, aiming at the roofs of Combe End Farm ahead of us. I must say my leg was no better but it was not incapacitating either. I did take stiles very slowly, once slipping off the riser and dangling on the fence until I found my footing, but I don’t think the Lees were even aware that I was having difficulties. Every now and then I rubbed at the spot where my leg muscle reached a juncture just below my left buttock and I suppose Harold, always bringing up the rear, could have seen this gesture. If so, he made no comment.

After reaching the road in front of Combe End Farm we turned right and approached a crossroads where we turned left on tarmac. I told the Lees that we now had 2.9 miles to go but that Moon had provided no further milestones to help us record our progress toward Goring. We turned right at the fork and maintained our flat surfaces for a while, even disdaining the opportunity of walking along a sunken lane that paralleled our road. When we reached the spot where it returned to our roadway we paused to watch a pheasant courtship in an adjacent cornfield. By accident we discovered, in doing so, a well concealed CW disc on a post. Waymarking, as we have already seen, was at best indifferent today.

We were heading in a northwesterly direction today and when we reached a derelict farmstead we turned our back on the wonderful riverine scene (with trains racing in and out of the Goring Gap over Brunel’s very attractive viaduct at Gatehampton) and took to field paths heading east (yes east!) up to the margins of the Great Chalk Wood. After our adventures in Bottom Wood earlier in the day I was a bit apprehensive about progress in the dark confines of woodland. There were plenty of signs about, but these were usually pointing to other routes than our own. Fortunately some helpful soul had taken a bucket of white paint and drawn arrows and the letters “CW” on trees and these hints were often useful.

I had my compass out as well and I took a long reading at a critical moment when the route reached a turnoff to the northwest and began a descent into a valley under a canopy so thick and dark that it was actually spooky. Tosh said it was enough to make you believe in the Grimms’ Fairy Tales. Then she moved on to her favorite topic, the evil Tony Blair. She wanted to know if, after he left government, he would take to the international stage like Bill Clinton – “but who could trust him?” I pointed out that not everyone shared her paranoid version of the prime minister and Harold said that Tony was very popular in the States.

After a long trek in the woods we could see light peering in on either side of us and then ahead of us as well. Just as we reached an escape stile we all stopped for clandestine pees before stepping out into the exposed sunshine, which had now decided to make its one and only appearance of the day. We now had to climb a very steep hill, following a hedge on our right, with grassy slopes falling away to our left and views of the viaduct and Goring itself opening up ahead of us. We had a level walk for a bit (with the consecrated ground of a cemetery on the other side of our hedge) and then began a long delightful descent to Goring’s playing fields.

These we crossed, entering suburbia (more pampas grass) and rounding several corners and a pub to approach the train station. It was just going 5:00 and I was amazed at how well we had recovered from our unscheduled diversion. The ticket window was closed and so we used a machine out front to buy our senior rail card-reduced tickets to West Drayton, where our Freedom Passes would prevail. The machine liked only some ten pound notes and not others but we succeeded just as the announcement was made for the arrival of the 5:03 to Paddington.

Knackered, we climbed aboard this train as soon as we reached the platform, a piece of very good timing indeed. We discussed our next walking opportunity, not easy to predict since Harold is in the States from October 1 through October 9, we are in Italy October 13 through the 20^th and Tosh is always busy. I called Dorothy on the mobile phone and we lapsed into tired silence on our milk train. Three ladettes got on at one point; they were sharing a container of chicken and mushroom Pot Noodle, which the fattest of the three left lying sideways on the adjacent seat. They spent a lot of time applying makeup and then turned up the volume on their music. The train soon became clogged with commuters. The Lees got off at Ealing Broadway – just as it was beginning to rain. When I got to Paddington at about 6:30 I got in the fast-moving taxi queue, having walked enough today, and I was home before 7:00 at the end of a very memorable expedition indeed.

Memorable, I have to add, for another, far more melancholy reason as well  – for a month later Harold Lee died of a heart attack while on holiday with Tosh in Morocco. We had intended walking the next stretch of the Chiltern Way on Sunday, October 22^nd, but this turned out to be a rainy day (and Harold had a cold) and so Sonning Common to Goring turned out to be Harold’s last walk, day 253 of his career on British footpaths. He had walked 2,554 and a half miles – in spite of his many frailties and his rickety posture. He never failed to brighten any expedition with his mordant observations, his ironic wit and his common sense. What his loss would mean to the surviving walkers was a worrisome burden, not to be contemplated too closely at this moment.

To continue with our next stage you need:

Day 7: Goring to Ewelme