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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 3 June 2018

Sunday walk: Cholsey to Goring

SWC walk 49 Length 22.5km 14 miles or (see below) 11.2 miles
Difficulty3/10
The Ridgeway, the Berkshire Downs and, for those doing the full walk, a Thameside hostelry associated with Wind in the Willows and Three Men in a Boat. Lunch is in the quaint village of Blewbury with its thatched cottages and peculiar thatched walls.
Trains
Take the 9:27 Newquay train from Paddington, and change at Reading onto the Didcot Parkway train (10:14 plat 15) This gets you to Cholsey at 10:32
Earlier birds can catch that same Didcot Parkway train direct from Paddington at 9:07. This stops at Ealing Broadway (9:15) and plenty of other points west.
You get to Cholsey a little early but you can dawdle by following the detour to Agatha Christie’s grave.
Return trains from Goring are at xx:00 till 21:00. Again, change at Reading for a faster trip. Get a return to Cholsey
Lunch The Red Lion, Blewbury 01235 850 403 is recommended. There is another pub in Blewbury, The Blueberry 01235 850 296 It’s on the London Road  near the Pound.
Tea The full walk passes the Beetle and Wedge, by the Thames in Moulsford 01491 651381 open till 4.
The Swan at Streatley 01491 878800 is another riverside pub, nearer the end.
In Goring itself we have the John Barleycorn , the Catherine Wheel (see notes) and the Miller of Mansfield.
The Village Cafe (9, The Arcade, High St) stays open till 5, apparently.
Walk Directions available here
Anyone wanting a shorter ending could cut out the loop going through Moulsford and stay on the Ridgeway at point 7 (i.e. don't turn left), rejoining the walk route in Streatley. This option is not in the directions. You would need to follow the Ridgeway signs and/or the OS map. This would clip about 4.53 km /2.81 miles off the walk length.
 T=swc.49

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

Anyone starting later and getting on at Ealing Broadway>

PeteB said...

Three on the early slow train and three others on the delayed later fast train and Reading connection so n=6 in all. A gently undulating walk and a favourite of mine- but on a hot day a bit of a grind especially along the ridgeway - but with classic wide-open vistas with the grass and other plants growing profusely. But the highlights were seeing brown hares again at Unhill Bottom and most surprisingly a stupendous carpet of poppies which your path along the valley bottom takes you through. (I'll post a photo on the walk pages.) Yellowhammers heard but not seen, (we had a bird expert) a flock of house martins near farm buildings and loads of kites and buzzards particularly along the final Thames path stretch where grass cutting was being done.
Three of us met up at the Beetle and Wedge for refreshments. A near perfect early summers day out but a slightly lower temperature would have been nicer. Wather w=warm-sunny-and-humid.

PeteB said...

One point I forgot to add earlier is that the SWC gpx file for this walk gives a flat length of 24.13 km - 15.08m a mile longer than posted.