🥾 Walk 542 - Tadley Common and Mortimer West End

Eleven of us, including two newcomers and a recent joiner, assembled in the free car park by Tadley Common on Saturday 22nd October. After a fairly wet week, this was a warm and sunny day, if a little muddy underfoot.

We started this nine-mile walk by crossing Silchester Road into the grounds of Tadley Calleva Football Club; exiting the other side into common heathland. Then we took a leave-covered woodland path through Roundwood Copse.

A short footpath through an industrial park brought us to Benyon's Inclosure, part of the Englefield Estate. We took a route that wandered around the various paths in this area of mixed woodland. At one point we stopped for a coffee break, using a fallen tree as a bench to sit on.

Leaving the woodland of Benyon's Inclosure, we crossed farmland around Mortimer West End, where we saw some lovely Autumn colours on the trees in West End Farm.

A tunnel-like path through Simm's Copse took us downhill on a narrow and slippery path, which was made more hazardous at one point where there were dangling bramble creepers were trying to catch us.

Back in the open, we crossed grassy fields and a small farm with an interesting mix of donkeys, sheep and alpacas. Then we found ourselves in the National Trust car park at Wall End, quite close to the Roman remains of Calleva Atrebatum.

Here there was a picnic table and benches, so we stopped here to eat our packed lunches before heading towards the Roman remains. We didn't follow the ancient walls, as we have done on may other walks in this area, but instead made our way to Silchester village. On our way to Silchester Common, we saw a slightly unexpected sight - Darth Vader brandishing his light-sabre on a branch of a tree! Presumably this was one of the entries for the Silchester Scarecrow Trail.

Crossing Silchester Common brought us back to Tadley, where most of us stopped at The Pelican pub for a drink before the final half-mile through Tadley Common returned us to the car park. See our route on Google Maps.

Thank you to Pat for leading this walk.

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