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This Week's Walks - Archive

Please see the Saturday Walker's Club This Week's Walks page.

This is an archive of walks done by the Saturday Walker's Club. You should only need to use this page if the SWC website is down.

Sunday 16 October 2016

Sunday Walk 1 – The rolling Chilterns countryside

Extra Walk 243 – Goring Circular via Hill Bottom
Length: 18 km (11.3 miles). Toughness: 4/10

10:00 Weston-super-Mare train from Paddington, changing at Reading for the Oxford train (arr 10:34, dep 10:46), arriving Goring at 10:59. If you get to Paddington early you can take the same Oxford train at 09:45 (Ealing Broadway 09:53) and not need to change. Buy a return to Goring & Streatley.

Trains back are hourly at 32 minutes past. Because of engineering works along the line it doesn't look as if you can save much time by changing at Reading for a non-stop train to Paddington.

This walk had a couple of Saturday outings last year but this is its first Sunday posting. Unlike the SWC's first Goring walks this one ranges over the undulating hills to the east of the river, with just a small overlap with Book 1's Walk 4 (Pangbourne Circular) around Hill Bottom. The Sun Inn here is the suggested lunch pub, with two later alternatives in Woodcote. Goring has several nice pubs to revive you before the journey home, and feedback from last year's walk said that the Village Café in its High Street was open to 5pm on Sundays: if someone could confirm this I'm sure the walk author will update the document to include it.

The walk document suggests a possible 7 km extension along the Thames Path to Whitchurch and Pangbourne, but at this time of year you'd have to keep up a brisk pace to avoid finishing in the dark (sunset is at 6:08pm). If you decide to do this, trains back from Pangbourne are at 37 minutes past.

For more information about the walk and a link to the Directions, OS Map, etc, go to the Extra Walk 243 page.
T=swc.243

1 comment:

PeteB said...

Remembering the old SWC proverb "early rain in the Great Wen means fine weather after ten" I travelled to Goring but only 1 other was at the station so just n=2 set off in w=sunny-and-mild-conditions which we enjoyed for the entire day. (OK there was one 30 second shower in the afternoon whilst walking through a wood.)

We had both brought sandwiches so we bypassed the Sun Inn by taking a slightly shorter route to reach Woodcote where we had our lunch on a bench overlooking the huge Green and cricket pitch before popping into the Red Lion for a drink. The pub is a real 1970s throwback- carpeted floors, a few old regulars, an open fire and meals for around £7; excellent.

After lunch we continued along woodland trails and open field with some superb views of Didcot. Not much leaf colour and some beeches looked positively verdant and we were a bit surprised to see a dragonfly!

We reached Goring early enough to catch the 15.32 but decided in the interests of research (and cake) to check out the Village Cafe which had a superb range of delicious confectionaries but their pots of tea could be a bit larger. After taking a photo of the weir and river for the walks page we ambled back to catch the 16.32. A fine days walking and glad I was not put off by the rain in London.