🥾 Walk 589 - Aldermaston, Cake and Thunder

The weather forecast for Saturday 8th July wasn't very inspiring. Rain and thunder were on the way. In fact, a few drops just started to fall as seven of us assembled in the car park by Rosebourne Garden Centre on the edge of Aldermaston village.

The walk description in the programme promised a cake-stop as well as a café-stop en-route, and the instructions were for us to bring some cake to the walk. Therefore, it was quite unexpected when Liz, the walk leader, offered us all cakes that she's made herself to a most professional standard. She'd made rock cakes and lemon cupcakes, and had even invested in colourful cardboard packaging!

With our chosen cakes safely in our rucksacks, we followed the pavement by the A340 Basingstoke Road until it diverged into the Aldermaston Cycleway - a combined cycle and footpath. We followed this to Aldermaston Bridge, where we crossed the River Kennet and left it for Frouds Lane, which took us to Froud's Bridge and the Kennet & Avon Canal. The sky looked foreboding and we could hear the odd rumble of thunder as we followed the canal towpath.

After a mile, we reached the lock at Aldermaston Wharf. We crossed to the other side of the canal on a swing-bridge shared with road traffic. Back on the towpath, we stopped at the Aldermaston Wharf Tea Rooms. The rain began to fall more heavily as we were ordering our various drinks, hot and cold. Luckily there were tables inside.

Suitably refreshed, we donned our waterproofs and continued along the towpath, but just after passing Padworth Lock, there was a temporary fence blocking the path and signs saying "Danger - Construction Site - Keep Out". Liz now had to come up with a detour to her planned route, which involved doubling back to Aldermaston Wharf and taking Mill Lane down to Padworth Mill.

From here, a footpath crossed the River Kennet on a couple of bridges over the weir and then took us south to Aqua Vitae Copse where we joined a quiet lane. This we followed to Upper Church Farm, where we took a footpaths across fields and into a strip of woodland containing a large stream, or small river (take your choice) complete with water lilies and bull rushes. Very picturesque.

The rain had stopped before we reached an old oak tree in a field - the location of the planned cake-stop. When Liz did the recce for this walk, there had been a great big log, which we could have used as a bench. It had gone, so we stood as we ate the amazing cakes that Liz had made for us. They tasted as good as they looked.

Invigorated by the sugar rush, we crossed a couple more fields and emerged onto Red Lane. At this point, it looked like there might be a footpath that would take us back into Aldermaston without having to walk along the lane. A quick exploration of the woodland opposite failed to reveal a suitable footpath, so we walked along Red Lane for half a mile. On reaching Aldermaston village, we headed up Basingstoke Road back to the car park. See our route on Google Maps. After thanking Liz for the walk and the cakes, a few of us went into the garden centre while the rest went home.

Thank you to Liz for leading this walk and making the lovely cakes. Thank you to Emma for the photos.

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