Book 1, walk 51 - Henley to Pangbourne
Length: 19.2 (11.9 miles)
Toughness: 6 out of 10
9.50 train from Paddington (10.00 Ealing Broadway) to Twyford, arriving 10.42, changing there for the 10.50 to Henley-on-Thames, arriving 11.02.
Buy a day return to Pangbourne. This should be accepted from Twyford to Henley if you explain you are on a walk, but if not the upgrade cost should not be too much.
For walk directions, click here
What better way to celebrate this season of mists, mellow fruitfulness and deepening mud than this book one classic, which despite starting and finishing on the Thames is really a walk on the gentle southern fringes of the Chilterns.
There are four options for lunch, numbers two and three being perhaps best to aim for as they are close together and if one is full the other hopefully will oblige. Number one is a gourmet option but too early in the walk: number four would be a bit of a stretch for all but the fastest walkers. (Assuming all are still open: research - aka a quick Google - suggests they all still have active websites).
In the afternoon you can either hammer on to get to the Lou La Belle Cafe in Pangbourne, which closes at 5pm, or take it easy and enjoy the daylight which today lasts till the soon-to-be extravagantly late hour of 6.20pm (5.52pm sunset).
Trains back from Pangbourne are at 17 and 47 past. Don't bother trying to change at Reading for a faster train to London as this saves 10 minutes at best.
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N=18 on this walk on a day of w=some-nice-sunshine. We soon split into sub-groups and as far as I know someone ate at each of the three middle lunch pubs. Seven or eight of us chose the Red Lion. The decor here was a bit shabby but the menu interesting. It was just about warm enough to sit in the garden.
Most leaves are still green but some good autumn colours are starting to come through - gold on the tops and exposed sides of beeches, some cherries aflame with red, a few yellow maples, and all of these colours plus some attractive maroons in the hedgerows. There were lots of red fly agaric mushrooms in the woods. In general, though I say so myself, this was a good autumn choice, with even more woods than I remember.
The walk was also given a thorough check by its adopter. An updated version will appear on the site in due course.
Terrific walk yesterday. I'd forgotten how lovely this walk is in the autumn, particularly the woodland stretches. I lost contact with the rest of the group after the first pub so walked alone for most of the rest of the day but enjoyed a close encounter with a small group of muntjac in the wood just before the Reformation pub.
I don't know if the walks "adopter" picked this up but at para 38 when you come to a tarmac road and turn left you can cross this road, go through a wooden kissing gate directly opposite and bear left diagonally across an open field to reach the edge of the wood where you turn right and continue with the directions from the end of para 39. This is a public right of way on the OS map and avoids a bit of road walking.
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