# 🥾 Walk 182 - Highclere, Burghclere and Beacon Hill

The first Saturday in September saw fourteen of us (well, thirteen people and one dog) gather at the car park on the A34 by Beacon Hill for a short easy walk around Highclere and Burghclere, with an option for a more challenging climb up Beacon Hill at the end. We had several newcomers on this walk, trying us out, and after a few introductions and the walk-leader's speech, we set off, crossing the A34 and heading east toward Old Burghclere.

This tiny hamlet has a church and some farm buildings. It once had a railway line passing through it and even had a station. Both line and station have long gone but the bedding for the track is now a footpath. We joined this footpath heading north, toward the larger village of Burghclere.

![Passing Manor Farm in Old Burghclere](https://www.berksww.org.uk/scrapbooks/volume13/images/old_burghclere.jpg)

We left the dismantled railway at the bridge by Duncroft Farm, and crossing this bridge we made our way east and then north, through a mixture of fields and woodland. After a couple of miles of rural footpaths, we entered the village of Burghclere.

Passing a school and a church, we made our way to the Sandham Memorial Chapel were we stopped to eat our packed lunches on some benches in the grounds of this National Trust property. We didn't go in, but I have been in the chapel before. It was built in the 1920s and its interior walls are decorated with paintings by Stanley Spencer, inspired by his experiences in the Royal Army Medical Corps during the First World War.

![Walking along the dismantled railway from Old Burghclere toward Burghclere](https://www.berksww.org.uk/scrapbooks/volume13/images/dismantled_railway.jpg)

After lunch we walked the short distance to The Carpenter's Arms pub, where we stopped for a drink before continuing the walk. The second half of the walk was mostly through farmland and woodland, taking us back to Old Burghclere, where we retraced our steps back to the car park.

For those that wanted an easy walk, this was the finish point, but about half of the group wanted to continue with the more challenging ascent of Beacon Hill. This involved a steep path though woodland followed by another steep path through open grassland before reaching the remains of the ancient hill fort, apparently dating back to 1000BC.

![A view of Highclere Castle as seen from the top of Beacon Hill](https://www.berksww.org.uk/scrapbooks/volume13/images/highclere_castle.jpg)

Walking along the perimeter of the hill fort, we had a good view of Highclere Castle to the north and Watership Down to the East. We also saw the tomb of the Fifth Earl of Carnavon, not far from the trig point on the top of the hill. He was born in Highclere Castle and, with Egyptologist Howard Carter, opened the Tomb of Tutankhamun in 1922.

We returned to the car park by the same route we had come up the hill, ending this walk of two contrasting parts. See our route on Bing Maps.

![Circumnavigating the Hill Fort on Beacon Hill](https://www.berksww.org.uk/scrapbooks/volume13/images/beacon_hill.jpg)

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