🥾 Walk 581 - Twyford, Charvil and Whistley Green

On Saturday 10th June, we had a short (5½ mile) walk followed by a social event - a trip to Twyford Beer Festival. The beer festival raises money for Orchid, a men's cancer charity, and takes place on Stanlake Meadow recreation ground, which is close to Twyford railway station. So, it makes perfect sense to have a walk from the station that explores the local area and finishes at the festival. Ian led a walk here before the beer festival last year, so I thought I'd take a turn to do one this year.

Starting at the railway station, we walked down Station Road and took an alleyway into Polehampton Close. Here, those arriving by car rather than train were waiting in the car park. Now seven of us walked up to the High Street and westward to Silk Lane. Here we took a permissive path into Loddon Nature Reserve.

We followed the course of the River Loddon southward until we reached the railway embankment, where the path then took us west and then north on a circuit around the lake. Like so many lakes around here, it was once a gravel pit. After it had been worked out, it was made into a nature reserve, complete with small islands where birds and waterfowl can nest, away from land-based predators.

At the north end of the lake, we briefly re-joined the main road before heading south again into Charvil Country Park, where we followed a path between Larks Lake and Old River. The River Loddon splits into two just after Dinton Pastures and recombines north of Charvil. The west channel is known as the Old River, and the right as the Loddon. We continued to follow the edge of Larks Lake as it left the Old River.

Crossing under the railway, we followed the edge of another lake until we reached the ford at Giddy Bridge, where the Old River flows over Whistley Mill Lane. Rather than wade through the ford, we took a footpath and footbridge by the Heron on the Ford pub. We then followed Whistley Mill Lane as far as Whistley Bridge.

Leaving the road, soon after it crossed the River Loddon, we turned east and Twyford Brook Path and then Hogmoor Lane (track). These were mercifully tree-lined, offering much needed shade as the temperature was now in the high twenties and the sun beating down on us. Leaving the track, we crossed an open field and footbridge back into the shade of woodland. Here we encountered the first and only bit of soft mud. Everywhere else the ground was dry and cracked after such a long time without rain.

Leaving the wood, we were in pasture fields, filled with buttercups. There were a few ponies sheltering from the sun under an oak tree. We found our own oak tree to sit under and eat our packed lunches. Another oak in the next field had a swing attached to it. We stopped to try it out, of course. Well, why not?

Crossing Twyford Brook on a road bridge, we walked through Broad Hinton Park, which is mixed in with a housing estate. Emerging onto Waltham Road, we walked toward the railway station and the entrance to the beer festival. Here the walk ended, with some people making there way back to the station or to their cars, while the rest of us headed into the festival. See our route on Google Maps. It was now 30°C and we were a bit envious of those festival-goers who had brought their own gazebos.

Rob led this walk and wrote it up.

📸 Back to Volume 44

Return to volume index