R5: Streatley to Sparsholt, Segbury Castle 18.6 miles

Posted on June 26, 2022 by martinpapworth

It seemed that the Thames had been the boundary that had cut the walk in two.

Last night we’d had a drink in a smart bar by the twilight river.

In the morning, Emma decided she could spare another day. She had to be in London but was invested in the walk.

Refreshed, we donned rucksacks, left Streatley along a busy commuter A road, then to a lane, to a track to a path…up, up ..but now into something recognisable as Wessex style downlands. The wooded Chiltern Hills falling steadily and ever more distantly behind us.

The sign at the start of the path that ascended to the downs.

In an unploughed hollow near the summit, nice earthworks; gullies, terraces and house platforms. It was marked as ‘The Warren’ …I wondered what it was.

We had walked off OS 171 West Chilterns and onto the 170 Vale of the White Horse. I was closing on Uffington.

In front, high exposed chalky undulations.

Good progress, Emma checked strada… good pace, still over 5km an hour as we neared the top.

A brooding day, overcast and.. windy with the promise of rain.

Suddenly, a very large and insufficiently nervous rabbit, lolloped round a corner to confront us. It watched from the side as we walked past. The black ear tips gave it away, a young hare.

We spotted two women approaching us.

They seemed like rare Ridgeway compatriots so I confronted them… they said they were. They’d been overtaken by another walker but had met nobody else doing the walk since Avebury. I guessed he had been the one I’d seen on the other side of Grim’s ditch yesterday.

They were sisters from Trowbridge but had spend much of their life in Canada.. coming home for a while to re-experience Wiltshire and beyond.

They asked if we were going all the way to Overton Hill. I said I would keep going until I reached home in Warminster. ‘You can always change your mind they said’.

It was good to chat ..but as we walked on.. their comment was shocking….my destination was set.. change my mind indeed…something pretty drastic would be needed to deflect me from my goal… though of course drastic things do happen.

Then the hedges disappeared and we were out on the exposed Gallops. Well guarded land, lots of notices telling us to stick to the path.

I had promised a pub stop at East Ilsley but it turned out that the path kinked towards the village but turned back to the crest of the ridge. It was a long way down and then back up again…and pubs on maps can be notoriously fickle…and today would be our longest day so far. We couldn’t really afford another 4km.

So, we threw ourselves down on a verge against some bushes, for shelter, on the edge of the concrete track. I unzipped the blue snack pack and posed the question

‘picnic or double decker’

Both types of chocolate looked worse for wear after 80km.. but it was definitely a double decker day.

The verge between cyclists and equestrians

We lay back in the grass. Behind us, the ground vibrated with sets of approaching and diminishing thudding sounds… and in front of us the sudden rapid whizz of a set of bikers in uniform speeding by. Followed by more thudding behind.

We rested in an island between cyclists and equestrians.

Emma laughed at the sudden busyness of our bleak world.

Re-rucksacked we plodded on through a huge virtually tree-less landscape …broken only by the A34 underpass which was unexpectedly decorated by murals of the local village churches…though the art was faded and graffitied….it had seen better days.

The rain came and went.

We were now into a landscape of large wheat fields. The wide wildflowered verges along the ribbon of our path. Regular signs told of an Oxford University investigation of wildlife restoration.

We approached another road with a car park… but before we got there.. an ideally placed black Ridgeway bench loomed up to welcome us. Another memorial to a walker who loved this place.

In the afternoon, a shower so intense that we had time to don full waterproof protection before it stopped.

Then another memorial that described an old war or rather an old warrior. Inscribed with Inkerman, Alma and Sevastopol. The Crimea, still in the news of course. This was really a love token from a wife to her lost husband. To remember Lord Wantage, Robert Loyd-Lindsay VC. A great local benefactor.

We sat on the steps to rest. While looking out over Oxfordshire, we read the inscription.

“I will lift up my eyes unto the hills, from whence cometh my help. Psalm 121.

We prepared to move on. A dog barked at us as its owners walked past.

Mid afternoon, 10km to go and we were slowing.

At the the A road down to Wantage, we saw a sign which told us that the Ridgeway centre was just up the road (imagine the potential civilized delights in such a place) but no time for the deviation (top tip: do less miles a day and see more).

A few hundred metres further on brought us to Segbury Camp. We rested as the sun came out and observed the ramparts while peeling a clementine. A dig in 1871 found an Anglo-Saxon grave against the southern rampart (a secondary intrusion) but excavations from 1996-7 found dating evidence to show Segbury had been occupied from the 6th-2nd century BC..so early to mid Iron Age as would be expected… but we needed to meet Sharon at 5.30pm.

We aimed for the Devil’s Punchbowl and Sparsholt Firs…and slowly, slowly we approached them. The Punchbowl was a deep,steep coombe and our path followed its south side. Just beyond it, the Firs marked the road we would take down into civilisation.

The day had been remote and far from nearly any occupied building. To find somewhere to stay, I had booked a place in one of the spring-line villages 2km downhill at the foot of the Ridgeway.

A long quiet lane took us down to Sparsholt and we found Sharon waiting. The pub had been emptied of facilities while being refurbished, but the barn was still occupiable. She showed us around and said she would be back with breakfast in the morning.

We crashed out and eventually found the strength to order pizza from Wantage.

Revived, we explored Sparsholt and noted the Platinum Jubilee itinerary on the signposts and the gathering bunting. The church was huge and its stones from various geological sources were steadily being revealed under peeling render.

A barn owl flitted white and silent between the trees.

R4: Watlington to Streatley, Grim’s Ditch 16 miles

Posted on June 15, 2022 by martinpapworth

Last night, with our pub closed, we were forced out into wider Watlington and due to lack of alternatives settled for a Thai meal in another pub. Emma said that it would be fine… and it was.

Breakfast observed by Cluedo sugar confections. Rev Green 2nd from left.

This morning, we had found a cafe in the brick and timber-framed High Street… and were eating smashed avocado on toast overlooked by a line of unexpected… but finely crafted, sugar confection Cluedo characters. . Colonel Mustard looked on disapprovingly as we discussed the day.

With a missed tutorial and an assessment due in a few days, Emma needed to get back… so this would probably be her last day. A convenient train station beckoned in Goring… at the end of today’s walk.

We stocked up in the local shop and retraced our route to the Ridgeway and soon reached our first Ridgeway information board map. This time with a faded photo of a smiling man pinned to it.

there were some words on the back….’almost finished my love, wishing you were here to help me complete this walk’.

We fell quiet.. and when, later in the day, we found another photo of the middle-aged man…still smiling but fallen and lying in the grass… we fixed him back to the information board where his widowed wife had placed him, before walking on.

We found a large, ultra-modern farm …and a few fields beyond, the cluster of brick and flint ruins which had once been North Farm. The economies of scale and the changing needs of agriculture.

Woods and fields: up and down over hills, we bumped into the flint St Botolph’s church, a quiet place near a hidden mansion house. We sat on the bench by the porch and a lady invited us in to see the wall paintings. The opposing entrance arches, though one was now blocked, had the simple semi-circular look of the Saxon period and the apsidal ended chancel was very rare.

The chancel apse, St Botolph’s Chruch, Swyncombe

The apse’s open decorated stars and vine leaf motifs reminded me of the 13th century painting I had seen uncovered in 1996 at NT’s Treasurer’s House in Martock, Somerset.

Yes, St Botolph’s paintings were also 13th century ‘but restored when the Victorian’s rediscovered them’ the lady watering the church flowers told us.

They looked good..

A fluctuating day of warm sunshine but with sudden showers.

The rain came down just as we entered a wood…. but the Chilterns West OS map promised a pub on the other side. There it was…. and open… but now turned into a tea shop. Emma plumped for something extravagantly herbal and I had English Breakfast…. though we shared a delectable apple and blackberry sponge cake.

Then sunshine again. A huge field of Oxeye daisies flickering white, almost full open… about to ignite…

We spoke of … imbalances…the established privileges of the political class.. why should people be allowed to inherit? Why should people fill their lives with the mundane? That every choice in life may close a door on another… we pondered opportunity cost …..as we dropped down into ‘Grim’s Ditch’

This was an impressive earthwork, shrouded in secondary neglected woodland which included many fading or dead ash trees. A serious looking walker was glimpsed briefly on the far side. Perhaps a fellow Ridgeway devotee.. but heading towards Ivinghoe.

Grim’s Ditch is undated, about 10m wide and 3-4m deep and sometimes with a surviving bank on the north side. We followed it west for over 5km to the River Thames. It is presumed that this was a Late Iron Age territorial /defensive boundary though its straightness reminded me of something like the early medieval /sub Roman Wansdyke (due to be crossed in Wiltshire), dividing up political units about 1400 rather than 2000 years ago. However, the Iron Age of the east is comparatively sophisticated and differs from the West Country….I was out of my territory here.

A long walk, weaving through trees… we spent our time looking at arborglyphs. There was MP again, someone had been carving that into trees since we started. Liz was 4 Gary but nothing was older than 1963, none were deeply cut and they were all gently fading back into the bark. Past moments and voices fading.

A phone call…’Mr Papworth?’ I trudged through a puddle ‘Yes’

‘it’s Sharon at the pub at Sparsholt, just checking you are still staying with us tomorrow night. You know the kitchen has been stripped out and there is no food’

‘Yes someone let me know a few weeks ago and I said it was OK but forgot to say I was walking so will not have transport. Are there other places in the village to eat?’

‘I can hear you walking now… no, I’m afraid that the next place is over 2 miles away’

‘Oh’ …I imagined an evening of dry roasted peanuts and nibbling a walk-crushed Double Decker.

‘Unfortunately, only Dominoes Pizza are willing to deliver food from Wantage’

‘That’s fine’

‘You don’t mind? That’s good, I’ll see you tomorrow’

We held on for the Thames. I had promised a quiet grassy riverside bank for lunch but the Grim’s Ditch went on and on and when the path did turn along the River… there was no wide flowing waterway in sight… instead, the path was lined with a golf course.. so at 1.30 we crashed out on a verge with a Watlington pasta pot and a Warminster picnic bar.

At North Stoke, the path took us close to the river via the parish church with its more doomy and messy 14th-century wall paintings (I much prefer 13th century….I guess, pre-pandemic, things tended to be more decorative and upbeat).

14th century wall paintings North Stoke Church

Suddenly; buildings, private landings and golf courses fell away and the dreamed for quiet meadow beside the Thames materialised. We settled down and watched geese honking as they drifted up river… doing nothing in particular. Then a flash of turquoise beside us as a Kingfisher projectile flew low and fast across the broad flowing water…. and then another.

A finely made brick and stone bridge, courtesy of Isambard Kingdom Brunel, built to carry the GWR trains across the Thames.

Brunel’s Great Western Railway bridge across the Thames

Through a deserted South Stoke and then we were in Goring, a place which had clearly been fashionable in the later 19th century. Lots of wealthy villas with their riverside views and boat houses.

The last bit always seems the longest.

We crossed the Thames by the Streatley bridge and trudged uphill a little until we found the pub.

Rucksack grooves in our shoulders, we were aching but the blisters were minor and things were still OK.