Toughness: 4 out of 10
9.57 train from Paddington (10.05 Ealing Broadway) to Goring, arriving 11.04
Note: this is a local service out of Paddington and so is not affected by the current disruption to long-distance Great Western services due to reported cracks in train bogies
Buy a day return to Goring & Streatley (not Goring-by-Sea!!)
This walk promises good bluebells and plenty of beech woods, which at present should be displaying gloriously bright green foliage ("eye-ache green", I call it). But it has to be said that a couple of past SWC attempts to catch the bluebells at their best have not been entirely successful. Will we be more lucky this time? I am banking on the fact that bluebells have been widely late this year, and Chilterns ones tend to be a bit later than those further south. Cross fingers, is all I can say.
The walk also has a slightly iffy history regarding lunch pubs. The Sun Inn has been both praised and slammed for unimaginative food in the past: the Red Lion was considered the best option on the last outing, but who knows if any of these pubs have survived the pandemic anyway? Bring a sandwich, says I. Hopefully Goring will be more reliable for takeaway tea or drinks (if it is not raining one can enjoy them by the Thames).
After tea/drinks, the optional 4.5 mile walk along the Thames Path into Pangbourne is always a pleasure. A GPX is provided for this but not walk directions, but the route is fairly obvious and well-waymarked anyway.
Trains back from Goring are at currently only hourly, at 48 past (52 past from Pangbourne)
This will hopefully be the last Saturday where we have to split into groups of six. It would be very useful if you could pre-register for this walk contact tracking purposes at www.lwug.co.uk: if not, please bring a piece of paper with your email written on it, which will be kept in an envelope and only used if a case of Covid arises on the walk. To let us know if a contract tracing requirement arises as a result of this walk, use covid@lwug.co.uk
3 comments:
Freedom Pass holders can catch the free Tfl train from Paddington at 9.43 (Ealing Broadway 9.51) and change at Reading.
"..You can also shorten the walk to around 12.0km (7.5m) by ending in Woodcote and catching the X40 bus.."
I might do the above👍
N=6 on this walk, others (according to apologies for absence received) put off by the apocalyptic weather forecast. Tut tut. Know ye not that dire forecasts are usually wrong in this country? So it proved today. Yes there were w=some-showers-but-also-some-sun, the latter especially in the afternoon. One very well-mannered sunny period arrived just after three of us had decided - what the heck? - to have lunch in the garden of the Eponymous Pub. It lasted while we ate our fish and chips and the next shower only came as we were leaving.
We split into three groups. One man and his greyhound soon got ahead of us all (that is greyhounds for you...): we hope he had a nice day. “We” were three fairly brisk walkers, who helpfully got lost once or twice to allow the two back markers to catch up with us briefly, before we shot off again (sorry...). In the afternoon the other two brisk walkers out-brisked your correspondent for a while. Their punishment was to miss a glorious great deer - much bigger than a fallow deer (sika? red? are there red deer wild in the south east?) - which bounded across the path between me and them and then leapt off into a bluebell wood.
Bluebells, yes: scattered throughout the walk: at best or only slightly over. I would be lying if I said there were any great show-stopping displays, but they were certainly nice. Lots of woodruff and yellow archangel too for the cognoscenti (ie moi). A big field or two of slightly fading oilseed rape. Stately beech woods with gorgeous bright green leaves. Also intense yellow buttercup fields. And in general gorgeous lush green May verges, everything still growing straight and strong with none of the straggly mess of summer. Heck, I even saw two orange tip butterflies.
Getting to Goring at 4.45pm, we three briskets found Pierpoint’s had shut at 4pm. But they very nicely did two takeaway teas and a cake for us nevertheless. We sat on a bench by the river in the sun to consume them and lots of mayflies emerged from the river as we drank. Far be it for me to advise a creature that has successfully mated for a hundred million years, but this did not seem to be the kind of still calm night they need for their amorous adventures. But who am I? Just a non-breeding member of a transient species of intelligent ape.
The other two got the 5.48 train. I decided to climb the hill above Streatley for the magnificent view. It was still quite sunny, but looked dammed wet to the north, so perhaps we had been lucky with the weather. I got the 6.48 train and changed at Reading onto a fairly empty GWR intercity train: my first ride on a long distance train in a year and a half. And so back to Paddington.
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