🥾 Walk 195 - The Turkey Walk

Fifteen of us turned up on Sunday 22nd November for the Turkey Walk. A walk that would include the biggest collection of turkeys I've seen, and I'm not referring to the walkers.

Starting from the car park near the Thicket roundabout on the A404 we headed west, crossing the A404 on a footbridge into Maidenhead Thicket. Emerging from the woodland of Robin Hood's Arbour, we crossed open fields to enter the Berkshire College of Agriculture near Burchett's Green. The footpath through the college takes you past a number of enclosures containing species normally unseen in the UK. We saw Wallabies, Emus, a Scottish Wild Cat and some Red Squirrels.

We descended the steep and muddy Prospect Hill to Hurley. It was often necessary to hang on the the fence to prevent yourself from slipping over. Crossing through Hurley, we joined the Thames Path at Hurley Lock, where we also made use of the public facilities. We followed the Thames Path, including several footbridges, until we reached Marlow.

Here we stopped to eat our packed lunches before crossing the River Thames at the road bridge and heading into Quarry Wood. This involved a steep and muddy uphill stretch to Cookham Dean, and then a walk through Copas turkey farm. Never have I seen so many turkeys. They were free-range and were quite curious of us as we passed through. They seemed happy and blissfully unaware of their impending fate.

Following the Chiltern Way, we passed through the woodland Cookhamdean Common and then through Pinkneys Green before crossing the under the A404 to Robin Hood's Arbour. From there we retraced our steps back to the footbridge over the A404 and back to the car park from where we'd started. See our route on Bing Maps.

This 11½ mile walk was made more demanding by the large number of muddy paths. We'd had a spell of heavy rain in the week preceding the walk, but hopefully the extra exercise has done me some good. Julia and I also managed to pick some sloes along the way. Julia is now making some Sloe Gin.

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