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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.

Wednesday 19 July 2017

Hobbitshire, the River Evenlode and Cotswold Villages

SWC Walk 246 - Kingham to Charlbury

Length: 17.6 km (11 miles)
Toughness: 2 out of 10

London Paddington: 10-22 hrs  (Hereford service)     Reading 10-52 hrs
Arrive Kingham: 11-46 hrs

Ealing Broadwayers: EB 09-50 hrs (Reading service).
Arrive Reading: 10-40 hrs. Connect with Hereford train as above

Charlbury to Paddington: 16-11, 16-40, 17-09, 18-38 and 19-43 hrs

Rail ticket: buy a day return to Kingham

This is a relaxing, mostly flat walk along the Oxfordshire Way through Tolkien's Hobbitshire, passing lovely Cotswold sandstone villages along the way. The suggested lunch stop today, 5.5 miles into the walk, is The Swan pub at Ascott under Wychwood (tel: 01993-832332) under new ownership since January 2017, your e.t.a 13-30 hrs, or the Wychwood Inn in Shipton under Wychwood, 4 miles into the walk.

Charlbury will be familiar with walkers who have done our Hanborough to Charlbury walk and there are several pubs in the village, my favourite being the Bell Hotel.
T=swc.246
Walk directions here: L=swc.246

1 comment:

Marcus said...

n=7 of us on this lovely, undemanding walk in Hobbitshire. After the recent hot weather which has deterred some of us from venturing out on SWC walks, it made a most welcome change to encounter cooler temperatures today, between 18 and 20 degrees C.
We left Kingham railway station in an w=English-mizzle which was too fine to warrant the wearing of waterproofs but damp enough to keep the little Hobbit folks indoors. The mizzle stayed with us all morning as we crossed vast Gloucestershire then Oxfordshire fields, with the sun briefly coming out as we arrived at the lunch pub. Recently refurbished and under new ownership, the Swan at Ascott under Wychwood provided excellent lunches for 3 of us, with our 4 sandwichers joining us for a drink later. The skies were very threatening when we left the pub to continue the walk, but lady luck was on our side today as the storms all around us kept away. Given the afternoon, like the morning, was mostly across open, exposed countryside, we would have been drenched if the skies had opened.
Arriving in Charlbury at 16-40 hrs, 4 went straight to the railway station and caught the delayed 16-40 hrs train, leaving 3 of us to enjoy a quick drink at the Bell Hotel, then the 17-09 hrs train back to London. Given GWR's general unreliabily, the fifteen minute delay at Didcot was quite acceptable to most of us - I still got to my local in time to watch the England-v-Scotland ladies soccer match.
Another most enjoyable mid-week SWC walk.