SWC walk 170 - Pangbourne via Goring Circular
Length: 14km (8.75 miles), with optional moonlight extension
Toughness: 3 out of 10
9.43 train from Paddington (9.51 Ealing Broadway) to Pangbourne, arriving 11.02
If you miss this or have trouble getting out of bed, the 10.05 Penzance train gets to Reading at 10.31 and you can connect there to the above train, departing 10.53
For a hand-drawn map of the route - no written directions needed! - click here. For other walk details click here. For GPX file click here.
This lovely Thames Valley walk, illustrated by a map courtesy of Streatley YHA, can be done in either direction, but I would suggest doing it anti-clockwise to get the hillier and longer part of the walk (5 miles or so) out of the way first. This brings you to Goring, where there should be a choice of several places for lunch.
In the afternoon you are following the river path back to Pangbourne for tea. The Lou Lou Belle Cafe here seems to have closed, but a Google search suggests another cafe has taken its place. If nothing else, the inevitable Costa Coffee is open till 6.30pm. There are also lots of pubs, so you won't die of thirst.
Trains back from Pangbourne are at 17 and 47 past. The online timetable suggests that for the 17 past trains you have change at Reading (which actually saves 10 minutes over the direct trains, by transferring to a non-stop train to Paddington): you can also do this for the 47 trains, if you wish. But personally I would only do this if a through train is not shown.
After tea, if the skies are clear, some of us may take advantage of the full moon to walk to Tilehurst, another 3.5 miles along the Thames Path. T=3.170
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It is a pity this walk always gets done in winter due to its short length as it has some pretty stretches. One struggled a bit to appreciate them in today’s w=drizzle-and-mist. Still n=10 of us did our best, enjoying a convivial day out.
We did the longer, hillier route in the morning and extended it with a variation of our own, into the woods and down a ridge into Goring. There the posh Miller of Whatsit pub was fully booked but the cheaper one did filling food and had a blazing coal fire (one forgets how much better they radiate heat than wood ones). The late George Michael’s house in the village is still festooned with tributes.
The temptation of a cosy train home proved too much for one or two at this point. The rest of us walked the sometimes slippy but always delightful Thames Path to Pangbourne. Arriving at 4pm we found one cafe closing, another bleak and empty, and the new Costa Coffee across the road cosy, cheerful, busy and with a nice selection of cakes (even vegan Christmas cake). And it stays open till 6.30pm. A lesson in economics there somewhere.
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