🥾 Walk 100 - Hill Bottom, Whitchurch Hill

Thirty people turned up on Sunday 4th May at The Sun pub in Hill Bottom for our centennial walk. Our group has been going since July 2012 and in that time we've done 100 walks (including this one).

This walk was led by Tim, who joined our group in April last year and has already led several walks for us. We set off from the pub heading east along the road before turning south along a footpath enclosed by hedges. With a little bit of incline to start with, the path soon levelled out and we were on Whitchurch Hill, which wasn't much of a hill compared with other high points on the walk!

We then joined the Chiltern Way (the long-distance path that we see a lot of on our walks) heading east toward Collins End. Before reaching Collins End, we diverted from the Chiltern Way and descended into Bottom Wood, where there were plenty of bluebells in flower.

Ascending out of Bottom Wood onto Straw Hill, we were confronted with a view of the River Thames. We could see Mapledurham Lock and some of Reading. The wind-powered electricity generator at Green Park was visible, as was the water tower at Tilehurst.

We carried on walking east along the top of the hill, where we saw a man with a paraglider, waiting for the right wind conditions for take-off. Turning north, we descended into a valley and then up the other side to Whittle's Farm. This was the steepest hill on our route although I can't find a name for the hill on my map.

Continuing north, down the other side of the unnamed hill, we entered Nuney Wood. Some of the paths were a bit muddy, but nothing too difficult. Changing direction to the west and into Holme Copse, we stopped to have lunch where there was a convenient fallen tree to sit on.

After the picnic was over, we continued our walk, emerging from the wood and crossing a farm. There were some piglets and sows in little sheds in a field we were passing, so we stopped to take a look.

One of the piglets came out to investigate us but suddenly decided it didn't like the look of us and ran behind the shed. The piglet soon regained its courage and sauntered out from behind the shed and walked round to the front entrance to re-join its Mum and siblings.

Further on in the same farm we saw a small group of lambs enjoying the rich green grass. With the recent mix of sunshine and rain, everything was growing well.

Heading north now, and into more bluebell filled woodland, we continued our walk. Once in the wood, we followed a path to the west until we came across a road. We followed the road north-west and then found another footpath heading south-west through more woodland.

At this time of year the woods show all the signs of life returning after winter. New leaves are sprouting from the skeletal trees with that bright green colour they have before they reach full size. While the new leaves are still small there is much more light in the woods for the wild flowers to enjoy. There was still quite a lot of mud on the paths, making some of them a little challenging.

At one point in Little Oaken Wood, our leader gave us a choice of taking the short way or the long way back to the pub. As the weather was so pleasant, we opted for the long route. This took us south-west out of the wood towards Blackbird's Bottom (Where do these names come from?) and on to Cold Harbour before turning south to Coombe End Farm.

From there we crossed Beech Wood and Beech Farm on our way back to Hill Bottom village. A bit of road walking got us back to the pub where we had started the walk. See our route on Bing Maps.

To celebrate our 100th walk, two of our members (Sue and Julia) had made a lemon layer cake, some chocolate muffins and some Mars bar crispy cakes. Also, the two members of the BWW Co-ordination Team that were on this walk (Jane and I) bought a large round of drinks for everyone. We gathered round a few picnic tables in the pub garden where I was cajoled into making a totally unprepared speech before we cut the cake and got stuck in.

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