🥾 Walk 569 - Wayfarer's Walk, North Oakley and Hannington

The weather on Saturday 8th April was unexpectedly good for a Bank Holiday weekend, with blue skies and only a light breeze. Seventeen of us (including a few visitors from Meetup and from other Ramblers groups) gathered in the free car park on White Hill, near Kingsclere, for a hilly nine-mile walk.

After I'd done the usual leader's speech and introductions, we began by following the Wayfarer's Walk, uphill to the east and then south-east to Walkeridge Farm. Here we saw sheep with their newly born lambs. The path continued, but downhill now, through a strip of woodland to the tiny hamlet of North Oakely.

Still on the Wayfarer's Walk we continued heading south-east, through farmland to White Lane, where we left the Wayfarer's Walk. At the other end of White Lane was a crossroads with an old-fashioned cast-iron road sign. One of its arms pointed north to Hannington Road, which we followed.

After a short walk along this road, we found the start of the Welly Boot Corner Walk. The fingerpost signpost had an actual wellington boot attached to it! Entering the woods of Warren Bottom Copse, we were slightly too early in the year to see the usually impressive spread of bluebells that we've seen there on previous walks.

As the path emerged from the woods into an open field, we stopped for lunch, finding some logs to sit on. During lunch, the conversation drifted from Red Kites to James Bond and then from Basil Brush to the sweets and chocolates of our youth. Quite a random conversation.

After lunch, we continued on the Welly Boot Corner Walk to Hannington. Here we stopped at The Vine pub for a drink and sat in their large and sunny pub garden.

Refreshed, we continued the walk through the picturesque village of Hannington and then headed north, through more hilly farmland.

Turning westward, we crossed a field into the woodland of Freemantle Park Down. Taking the path across the top, we soon reached the mighty transmitter mast on Cottington's Hill. I know a story about this mast, which I duly told.

One day in the 1970's, viewers watching the ITV early evening news found that the picture became distorted and the sound was replaced by a strange, alien voice. It claimed to be Vrillon of the Ashtar Galactic Command and delivered a speech stating that the people of Earth were heading for a disaster of our own making. The speech lasted several minutes, telling us how we should mend our ways.

Southern Television (ITV) were inundated with phone calls that evening from (understandably) worried viewers.

In those days, the transmitter received its feed from another TV mast via a microwave link, and it is believed that some pranksters with a technical bent had found a way to feed their own audio signal into the link, which was then broadcast by the transmitter. The police never discovered who did it. Perhaps it was intergalactic aliens!

With the story told, we did our final stretch of the walk, which went steeply uphill to the top of Cottington's Hill, where there were great views of North Hampshire and Berkshire. It was then downhill through fields back to the car park. See our route on Google Maps. We'd done 9½ miles with 1,600 feet (488m) of ascent in total.

Rob led this walk and wrote it up.

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