King's Somborne to Crab Wood and return

We'd had a lovely time with our grandson and his parents yesterday, and stayed overnight. Bertie was in delightful form, so it was rather difficult to drag ourselves away, but we did; today's aim was walking. We were rewarded by a walk which was perhaps less outstanding than the previous leg of the Clarendon Way had been, but nevertheless very pleasant, and worked well as a circuit (necessary because we only had one car with us). The weather was mostly grey, with the sun just peeping out very occasionally, but the lovely autumnal colours made everything seem more cheerful than it otherwise would have done. Bertie is sleeping much better than he did, but he still wakes early, so it was not too difficult for us to get to the village of King's Somborne by soon after 8.30am, giving us plenty of time to do the walk in daylight.

As we had driven past churches and war memorials we had been reminded that today was Remembrance Sunday, and since we had planned to park right by the church in King's Somborne, where I was fairly sure there was a war memorial, we'd realised we might have a problem. We weren't wrong! The little slip road where we parked last time had gained some "no parking" signs. We drove into the main part of the village and easily found on- street parking about a quarter of a mile away, at about SU364411, on the road which eventually leads to Up Somborne. We found a parking spot actually on the route of the Clarendon Way, but we started off by walking back through the pretty little village, with its thatched cottages, bigger houses, and a little stream running though, to rejoin the route at the point where we had left it, on the A3057.

We turned around and walked back past the car then continued along the road out of the village before turning right onto a path which very definitely climbed. Behind us, good views opened up back to the village nestling in the valley. We were overtaken by a dog with cough which nevertheless, like its owner, was going faster than we were! The contours here were quite easy to read ; we'd climb then be on fairly level ground, then descend a bit - and we did! After than though the contours were much more complicated and I couldn't work it out. It turned out to be a delightful undulating landscape. We passed grazing horses at Hoplands, with a horse and rider walking around the gallup in suitably picturesque fashion, then we followed a sunken track around Charlwood Copse before emerging onto Ashley Down.

We now climbed up Beacon Hill, where there is a seat on which to sit to admire the view, and a massive log (more a tree trunk) dragged here in 2020 by someone called Simon Clarke, and left with an inscription. The Simon Clarke who left the log behind appears to have been very much alive, but sadly it reminded me of my colleague Simon Clark who died far too young earlier in 2021. We didn't stop here long, but after taking care to head east rather than looping around to the southwest and Parnholt Wood, we changed maps from Sheet 131 (Romsey, Andover & Test Valley) to OL32 (Winchester). There seemed to be at least two tracks heading along the edge of Beaconhill Plantation in the general direction we wanted ; I suspect either would have done. After a short distance (but slightly further than I'd expected), Richard spotted the Farley Mount monument to our right, and we diverted briefly from the route of the Clarendon Way in order to take a closer look.

We returned to the Clarendon Way continued past the Farley Mount Monument carpark and on to the country park. Here the route is not as shown on the map - it actually stays closer to the road , which has the advantage that you stay at the top of the hill rather than having to descend then climb again. We crossed open land with lovely views then followed the path through attractive autumn woodland. When we reached Crab Wood, the route on the OS map is shown as going along the road, but there was still a path alongside it, through the trees. It is technically a minor road but it was getting quite busy with people visiting the country park, so the path was greatly appreciated. Every so often (far more frequently than the OS map implies) we encountered car parks. Most of these were rather busy, which was slightly worrying as we are hoping to park in one of these car parks when we return for our final walk on the Clarendon Way. However, we soon reasoned that some of the car parks are less popular than others, and some are large and/or have less popular overflow areas. The Crab Wood car park at SU433293, which was our turning point (chosen because we can't be sure of parking any nearer to Winchester), was one of the large car parks and there was certainly plenty of space today. We also eventually found the advertised picnic area (well, at least one picnic table in a nice wooded area) and we stopped here to eat the flapjacks we had with us. Then we turned around.

We retraced our steps back to the bench by the Simon Clarke log on the top of Beacon Hill, and this time we did stop, to eat our proper lunch. We then turned away from the Clarendon Way and followed a delightful and fairly obvious route which we would recommend highly, somewhat to the south of the Clarendon Way, through Parnholt Wood then along the bottom of the valley below Furzedown. This route didn't have the undulations that our outward route had had (we descended gradually) which was nice for a return leg, and what we lost in views of rolling countryside was more than made up for by the glorious autumnal colours in Parnholt Wood. The path emerged close to Hoplands (the horsey place we'd passed on the other side this morning) and from here we followed minor roads down to King's Somborne and so back to our car. We'd made fast progress, so while our aim had been simply to complete the walk in daylight, we we actually back in our flat in Milton Keynes before it got dark!

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