October 23, 1981: Goring to Watlington
North Farm
Three and a half weeks passed before I was able to undertake another excursion on the Ridgeway. For two weeks I had been chained to a sheet shop in Notting Hill – while Tony and Clark were restocking their shelves in New York. There had been nothing but the most dismal weather this fall and consequently very few opportunities for a day in the country. Today, a Friday, promised to be dry and partially sunny. I think, however, that the weatherman was over-optimistic about the temperature – for the day proved to be on the chilly side.
I got my first taste of this at 7:30 when I went outside to wait for a bus on Elgin Crescent. I made a dash to the bus stop for what proved to be two useless 52′s but it wasn’t long before I boarded a number 15 for Paddington. I bought my ticket and took the 8:15 to Reading, where I had about a fifteen-minute wait. The sun was shining but it was quite cold and I marched up and down the platform several times before the little local for Oxford arrived.
At 9:15 I got off at the Goring station, where I had spent so much time on the last trip. There was no one here to collect my ticket. I spent a few minutes adjusting my pack and trying to finish a roll of film. This process was not completed until I had walked some distance on Thames Road, amid the suburban housing estates and apartment houses of the village. I exchanged “Good mornings” with several of the dog-walking and bicycle-pushing locals while I changed film on a walkside bench. Sometime around 9:30 I was able to make a good start again, wearing only my red sweatshirt and brown hat again and carrying Jennett and a supplementary guide to the Ridgeway by Hugh Westacott.
I expected some complex route finding problems, which is why I was doubly armed today, but the first stages were simple enough, mostly road or path walking in a narrow strip between the rail line to my right and the Thames to my left. The latter was only occasionally on view through the back yards and over the hedges of the lucky riverine suburbanites –whose dogs had a thing or two to say about this passing stranger in spectacles and blue knapsack. The train drivers sounded their fierce horns off to the right.
After the lovely village of South Stoke the road walking ended quite abruptly at the riverside and, with only the faint encouragement of a public footpath sign on a gate, I was introduced to a sodden stretch of grass with no path visible, only the somewhat reassuring sight of another similar riverside gate to the north. I climbed over a little fence (since the first gate was sited in a quagmire) and splashed upriver. I was briefly reminded of a foggy day in the Cheviots, but the footing soon improved.
It was quite nice walking this close to the river. There was sun to my right, giving good light – though the prospect to the west was a bit black and my confidence in the weatherman paled for a few moments. Swans were swimming or skimming the surface of the water. I thought often today of Jay Cardinal and our canoe trips on the Thorneapple River back in Michigan or our rambles together at Rose Lake or in the Farm Lane Woods. I did not see a single boat on the water, nor, in the entire day, a single walker going in either direction. Such isolation encouraged those feelings of loneliness that often overtake the solitary walker. These and the route-finding anxieties and the cold, which produced a puff of steam with every breath, made today’s outing less pleasant than earlier sojourns on this path, though the day was full of its own rewards.
On the towpath and hidden beneath a Brunel railway bridge I paused for a clandestine pee. Near Littlestoke House I picked up a newly fallen chestnut, which I later lost. Its talismanic charm proved strong enough to get me though the first of the route-finding puzzles – the escape from North Stoke Churchyard. This proved to be easier than expected and I was once again heading out of town on a very muddy road full of toddlers and their nannies. Then it was along the edge of a field in which a farmer was struggling with his Range Rover. The last of the river views was left behind as I entered the grounds of Carmel College, the Jewish public school once attended by Dorothy’s cousins, the Levy sisters, and visited briefly by me in 1973. None of this year’s crop of scholars was is evidence as I tried to follow guide book instructions on the sharp turn to the east – which took place within the College’s acreage.
I began to follow the appropriate pubic footpath but it soon became quite overgrown. Nettles stung my wrists and burrs attached themselves to my sweater and pack and my hat was needed for protection from the branches that snatched at my head. After fighting the undergrowth for half a mile I emerged onto the busy B4009 and stood blinking in the sudden sunlight, searching in vain for a continuation of the path on the opposite side of the highway. I spotted it at last and was soon pressing eastward along the top of Grim’s Ditch, whose overgrown ten-foot high bank separated two fields, north and south.
I must say that I was not taken with the dyke, since its foliage prevented any view of the surrounding countryside. It was often wet underfoot and the green tunnel was full of nervous birds, including many pheasants – who would swoop off in terror as I approached or run up the path ahead of me like speed walkers with elbows pumping wildly. It would have been a very good day for bird watching, had I had the time. There were also squirrels about, rabbits, hares, even a cute little hedgehog.
Near Bachelor’s Hill the dyke began to climb steeply. I waved to a farmer on a tractor. We were in beech woods here and it was quite lovely, though there was some ambiguity about the next turn off. I encountered a number of inviting side roads but as each was marked private I resisted. The path (or paths) switched sides of the dyke every now and then and there was very little waymarking. I persevered to the very end of the ditch itself, as Jennett had advised, and was rewarded with the sight of a Ridgeway Path sign lying on the ground in a bed of leaves. Then it was up another steep hill to Nuffield – and a brief pause for orientation.
It is curious that the worst problems of route finding arise in corners of civilization and the next obstacle was a good example – how was I to get across the golf course? Fortunately there were some little white posts with faded black acorns to guide walkers across the fairways and around the bunkers. I did feel conspicuous walking over the greens in my muddy hiking boots. Golfers were still about on this sunny day.
The descent from the course brought me out on the A423 and I went into the Crown Inn for a pint of lager and some cellophaned snacks – the prospect of compiling my own sandwiches in the pub suddenly seeming like less than a good idea. It had taken me much longer to get here than I had planned, spoiled as I was by all those easy miles atop the ridge roads in the Berkshire hills. These Chiltern ups and downs were making it ever harder to imagine that I could get all the way to Aston Rowant – which would have been a seventeen-mile day anyway. I knew, however, that I could go into Watlington instead.
The pub was my only rest of the day. In its tiny room I was entertained by the chatter of some wardens from the nearby Huntercombe Borstal. One matron was slogging down her wine and announcing that she was making some changes in her bedroom, “I couldn’t find a new man so I’m getting new curtains.” She also announced that Air Raid spelled backwards is Diarria (sic). I was in the Crown less than half an hour and then it was time, around 1:30, to continue.
I crossed the highway and found the public footpath sign that introduced me to a small patch of conifers. At the bottom of this overgrown path I emerged onto a “cornfield” in an explosion of pheasants and looked for what Jennett had described as a narrow chasm in the corn. Well, he had done his walking somewhat earlier in the year, for the corn had long since gone from this field and I was left with a ploughed emptiness. Someone, perhaps equally anxious, had persevered at some time in the recent past – at least there was a barely visible line of march through the green stubble. This I followed into the next wood, where a white sign and accompanying arrows indicated a crossing with some public footpath. Which one was not indicated. Jennett advises a quick departure from this wood so I felt reluctant to continue on this path. I peeked up the next field and thought I could discern another vague hint of a trod in the green stubble. The late afternoon shadows, for it seemed to be getting dark quite rapidly now, intensified my feelings of despair, but I decided to have a go at this hill on the grounds, more instinct than hard information, that this route must be the famous Ridgeway Path.
Up I went, fuelled by the last of my pub lager. What had looked like a path from below all but disappeared as the feet sought reassurance on the flanks of the hill. I continued to a spot where a lane began and I was soon rewarded by the sight of a half-hidden pond mentioned in the guidebook. I had guessed right, indeed through all the ambiguities of today’s route I was lucky enough never to have put a foot wrong.
I walked past Ewelme House and began to hunt for a continuation of the route down the hill. Instinct (supported by the evidence of other shoe prints) persuaded me not to climb a fence beyond which the route was supposed to lie. Instead I stayed just outside the fence and this proved correct. Soon there was a steep rise up a road to Swyncombe Church. I paused to catch my breath up here, noticing the advancing hour hand on my watch and realizing that it would definitely have to be Watlington as today’s terminus.
I was surrounded by beautiful woodland, with many autumn shades and abundant birdlife. Below me was a steep descent and a long rise to the top of Swyncombe Down – the route following a muddy forest road. I pressed forward and upward and at last got to the top, where the incline tilted abruptly downward again. I came into some open territory near North Farm, where the route stretched northeast again – the line of march now for a many mile. After the Britwell road the route, which also coincides with the ancient Icknield Way hereabouts, re-entered a tunnel of scrub. I did not welcome this last mile of chilly, muddy progress but at 3:30 or so I reached Icknield, where, abandoning the Ridgeway for the day, I began a mile of tarmac walking and car dodging that brought me into Watlington
Here I began to search for bus stops and even went into the post office to make enquiries. My hopes for buses to some place more convenient than Oxford were not to be realized– so I had to hang about for some 40 minutes. I had a brief tour of the town and a longer rest on a bench beneath the town hall. Girls in their green school uniforms strolled by. As an English Sheep Dog marched up the street, I put on another sweater and my coat, took three Excedrin, and ate some peanut brittle. Just before it got properly frigid I got on the Oxford bus at 4:38.
The ride lasted 55 minutes and passed some interesting villages in its early stages. I dozed a bit. We made a stop at the Cowley car plant and got caught in Oxford traffic jams. I must say it was funny to enter this academic haven, with its red-ivy walls, under such circumstances. At the Gloucester Green bus station the driver gave me instructions on how to reach the train station. Here I bought a ticket for the 5:47 train (having been assured that my best bet was to buy a return). I slopped a hot cup of tea over my fingers while waiting on a platform filled with college kids going home for the weekend. Somehow this scene contrasted favorably with the louche line-up in front of the Greyhound bus station in East Lansing, Michigan.
We might have made our connection in Didcot except for the fact that the Indian conductor had an argument lasting thirty minutes with a young Oxonian – who refused to believe that he must pay an extra fee for his bicycle. Both parties insisted they knew the rules, both insisted they would report the other, and we were all several minutes late at Didcot as a result. (In retrospect, the Greyhound bus driver would have found a faster – and more physical – way of dealing with this problem.)
The telephone was not working on the platform (when I picked it up I got a conversation in Arabic instead of a dial tone), though one passenger did get through to her boyfriend in time to inform him that the train she had earlier jumped onto at Paddington had evidently not stopped in Slough – as she had hoped. I sat opposite a young man with the racing forms and a wen on his nose. He made mad figures in the newspaper until we reached Paddington at 7:30 – a rather late return. I was lucky with the Metropolitan Line and was home by 7:45.
To continue with the next stage of our walk you need: