Fifteen of us, including a couple of newcomers, gathered in the Pangbourne Village Hall car park on a rather cold and grey morning for our first walk of the year. We set off through the village and onto a footpath that ran parallel with the River Pang before joining one of the Berkshire Circular Routes.
I can't find any information on the Berkshire Circular Routes even though they've appeared on Ordnance Survey maps of this area for many years. Anyway this one took us across fields and up into Sulham Wood. It then took us through Mosshall Wood and back out into open fields to Vicarage Wood on the outskirts of Tilehurst. The route then doubled back to Sulham Wood, where we stopped for our picnic lunch, sitting on some fallen trees.
The picnic over, we followed the route to Tidmarsh, crossing the River Pang before stopping for a drink at the Greyhound pub. Suitably refreshed, we left the pub and the Berkshire Circular Route in favour of a longer route on footpaths through Tidmarsh and then through Pangbourne College.
Leaving the college, we followed the road for a bit before joining a footpath that led us through a couple of fields and into mixed woodland at Berry's Copse. We emerged from the woodlands under a railway bridge onto the A329 Shooters Hill, which runs alongside the River Thames. We followed this back into Pangbourne, passing The Swan pub and the weir across the Thames by Whitchurch Lock. See our route on Bing Maps.
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