🥾 Walk 93 - Hailey and the Ridgeway

The weather on Sunday 16th March offered blue skies, sunshine, a gentle breeze and was just about the perfect temperature for walking. This enticed sixteen of us, including two newcomers to meet at the King William IV pub in the beautiful hamlet of Hailey, near Ipsden in South Oxfordshire for a lovely undulating walk led by Jo. It was good to see that the pub openly welcomes walkers, encouraging them to make use of their car park.

After a fortnight of dryer and warmer weather, we were confident that much of the recent mud would have dried and some of the group happily exchanged their gaiters and waterproof jackets for sun-hats and sun screen.

Setting off from the pub, we soon crossed rolling farm land, heading south round Warren Hill towards Well Place and then up Berins Hill. At one point, we successfully negotiated a path across a field with a large and rather nervous herd of cows and their young. Our route included much ascent and descent so we all appreciated the drink stop which was taken looking south towards Brown’s Wood.

At Ipsden Heath we started to head north towards Heath End, after which we would soon meet up with the Ridgeway and our lunch stop today was in a lightly wooded area where our path crossed this long distance national trail (87 miles from Wiltshire to the Chilterns).

This is the second BWW walk this month that has included part of the Ridgeway and on such a beautiful spring day, it was a hive of activity. As we sat on several conveniently placed fallen trees eating our sandwiches, many cyclists passed and we saw several other walkers making the most of the lovely weather.

After lunch, we followed the Ridgeway westwards, enjoying a wandering path with a screen of trees and fields stretching away on either side. After another short climb, the path emerged on the top of a man-made bank known as Grim’s Ditch which is an impressive but mysterious feature on the landscape. It’s thought that it was constructed sometime in the Iron Age and was possibly some form of boundary between different territories.

A short distance after walking through Oaken Copse, we left the Ridgeway, heading south through Wick’s Wood and back to Hailey. This very enjoyable walk was 7.8 miles long, included 1681 feet of ascent and many wonderful views. See our route on Bing Maps. (Thank you Claudia for providing the GPS record of the walk.)

On returning to the popular King William IV pub, most of the group stayed for a well-earned drink. Sitting outside, we were able to enjoy the banks of golden daffodils opposite the pub and take in yet another stunning view. We agreed that it would be lovely for Berkshire Weekend Walkers to return to explore more of the South Oxfordshire area in the future.

Thank you Sue for the write-up and the photographs of this walk.

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