Some nice weather and the option to do a long or shorter walk attracted seventeen people to our walk on Sunday 1st June.
This was almost a repeat of our 11th walk, which we did in September 2012, expect for some minor changes to the route and some major differences in the weather! Last time round we had heavy rain all morning. This time we had sunshine all day.
We set off from Odiham Wharf car park and followed the canal tow-path going east towards Winchfield Hurst. On the way we were passed by the occasional canoe or boat.
As we approached Winchfield Hurst we saw a horse in someone's garden by the canal. On closer inspection it proved to be a life-size statue.
On our arrival at Winchfield Hurst, we were obliged to leave the tow-path. There was a landslip last year on the Dogmersfield loop where trees and soil slid down the bank and pushed the tow-path into the canal. Although the canal is now open to navigation, the tow-path is still closed, so we followed a mixture of lanes and footpaths through Dogmersfield and back on to the tow-path further south.
Doubling back up the tow-path, we crossed the canal and entered Dogmersfield Park, where we stopped by Tundry Pond to eat our picnic lunch and watch the swans.
After lunch we walked through the park estate and came across a cow lying in a food trough. It seemed happy enough and didn't appear to be stuck so we didn't worry ourselves about it. Perhaps it was cooler in the food trough than in the field.
We left Dogmersfield Park, made our way through a rather muddy woodland path and emerged into a sunlit meadow, filled with buttercups, large daisies, and an almost hidden stream running across the middle of it.
After walking through Broad Oak, a single lane with its handful of houses, we crossed the canal over Broad Oak bridge and re-joined the tow-path, heading west back to Odiham Wharf. On reaching the car park, most of the group elected to finish the walk there, having done 7½ miles. Six of us continued with the second loop of this figure-of-eight walk.
Heading west along the tow-path for about 1km, we diverted through a farm to the Derby Inn for a relaxing drink in their beer garden before crossing through Warnborough Green. We came across a rope swing hanging from a tree, and as no one else was there to see us, we thought we'd try it out. It took my weight OK but no one else was brave enough (or childish enough) to try it.
Next we crossed the River Whitewater at a ford before re-joining the Basingstoke Canal tow-path by King John's Castle (also known as Odiham Castle). We took a look at the ruins before continuing along the tow-path towards the Greywell Tunnel.
The last half-a-mile of canal before the entrance to the Greywell Tunnel is a nature reserve and not open to boats. As a result, the water is very clear and fish can easily be seen. The tunnel is also closed to water-born traffic and is home to several species of bat.
As we walked alongside this section of the canal we saw quite a few examples of the local wildlife. These included fish (we also saw fish in the River Whitewater) swans with their cygnets and some baby moorhens on a nest.
The the tow-path stops at the tunnel entrance, so we followed a short footpath into Greywell and then walked along a lane heading out of the village, going south-east.
The lane crossed the River Whitewater before we left it for a footpath that took us through fields back to the canal at the Warnborough Green swing bridge. (Actually it's a lift-bridge.) Back on the tow-path again, we followed the canal through North Warnborough and back to Odiham Wharf.
It was after 5pm by the time we got back to the car park and the weather was still warm and sunny. The average pace on the second half of the walk was much slower than on the first, because we kept stopping to look at our surroundings, and so it took longer than the first half despite covering fewer miles. See our route on Bing Maps.
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