# 🥾 Walk 425 - Dunsden Green, Binfield Heath and Crowsley Park

Thanks to changes in the Ramblers Covid-19 guidance issued at the very end of July, on 2nd August six walkers could become seven on this circular walk starting at Emmer Green on the northern edge of Reading.

Leaving the car park next to Caversham Park Tennis Club - where practice for next year's Wimbledon seemed to be in full swing - we walked past Loddon Brewery heading for Dunsden Green. An information board on the Green told us that poet Wilfred Owen had spent several weeks here in the summer of 1911. This attractive hamlet of southern England would have been a world away from the horrors that he was to face on the Western Front just a few summers later.

Leaving Dunsden Green we passed through fields of corn, wheat, barley and flax as footpaths took us in the general direction of Shiplake. We took care as we passed by Sunday morning leisure walkers and Shiplake dog walkers - and their ever happy dogs - all, like us, enjoying the warm sun.

![Picnic at Crowsley Park.](https://www.berksww.org.uk/scrapbooks/volume33/images/crowsley_park1.jpg)

Not feeling well enough dressed for passing by the grounds of Shiplake College, we veered off north through Shiplake Woods and then through High Wood to the Bottle and Glass pub at Binfield Heath. Entry to the lovely pub garden has to be by pre-booked appointment in this Covid-19 summer. No pub lunch for us and so we walked on to our own picnic lunch stop in Crowsley Park.

The leader earned points for the attractiveness of the lunch stop but was in danger of losing them as rain drops started to fall. A two percent chance of rain doesn't mean it cannot rain. Luckily for the leader's credibility - and for those without waterproofs - the single offending rain-cloud quickly moved on.

There was just an hour's walking after lunch as we headed back to our starting point. The northern edge of Reading always arrives unannounced; it is a pleasant surprise that the countryside can be so attractive just a few hundred yards before the houses of Caversham Park and the Reading traffic re-appear.

![Picnic at Crowsley Park.](https://www.berksww.org.uk/scrapbooks/volume33/images/crowsley_park2.jpg)

*Thank you to Nigel for leading his first walk for us and for writing it up afterwards.*

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