It was a dull grey day and only 5°C on Sunday 5th December. It was windy, too; 15mph gusting to 30mph, making it feel much colder. Even so, eleven people (a mix of regulars and visitors) bravely gathered at the White Hill car park near Kingsclere.
We set off by following the Wayfarer's Walk over the tops of Cannon Heath Down and Watership Down, taking the full brunt of the wind. We stopped briefly by a young beech tree, recently planted on the spot of the old beech tree that was featured in the novel Watership Down, written by local writer Richard Adams.
Leaving Watership Down for Nuthanger Down, we passed a strip of woodland which provided some shelter from the wind. Then we left the Wayfarer's Walk and made a long descent to Sydmonton, home of Lord Andrew Lloyd Webber. Passing through the estate, we could just glimpse Sydmonton Court, mostly concealed by trees.
Next we followed footpaths through farmland before heading uphill again along a tree-lined track. I had originally planned to stop for lunch on Ladle Hill, with its excellent views over Berkshire, but today's weather called for a plan-B. So instead, we stopped for lunch in the shelter of woodland before completing our uphill stretch.
Our tree-lined path emerged into open fields where it joined the Wayfarer's Walk at a tee-junction. Turning left, we continued uphill a little longer before reaching Ladle Hill, an Iron-Age Hillfort. We began to circumnavigate the earthworks but our views were not quite as good as expected. It was clearly raining over Reading and the clouds were heading our way.
We cut across the middle of the hillfort and re-joined the Wayfarer's Walk heading east, toward Watership Down. Instead of retracing our steps from Nuthanger Down, we took a detour towards Ashley Warren Down and then re-joined our outward route at the Richard Adams beech tree. We picked up the pace as the rainclouds got nearer, and made it back to the car park with minutes to spare before the rain began falling. See our route on Google Maps. We'd walked 14.2km (8.8 miles) with 307m (1007 ft) of ascent in total.
Return to volume index