Watlington to Goring

This was our final day of this short break on the Ridgeway and it stayed dry all day. Indeed, when the sun was out, it was almost too warm for walking (note added a few weeks later: All things are relative! In comparison to the weather for our final three days on the Ridgeway, the weather on 24th June was positively chilly). It was a lovely varied walk.

Apart from the disturbance when our fellow guests engaged in loud conversation as they returned to their rooms at 1.30am, we slept well. We were conscious of quite a long walk and also needing to travel home today (so I could head off to a conference tomorrow) so we were pleased that breakfast at The Fat Fox started at 8am (and indeed they will serve it earlier if you ask). We had cereal and then a delicious cooked breakfast, with locally sourced bacon and sausages - and probably everything else too! We had a brief chat with the proprietor about the coincidence that our daughter ate at The Fat Fox last weekend and the confusion caused by there being a Watlington in Norfolk (close to where we live) as well this one in Oxfordshire. We left around 9am and bought lunch provisions from the Co-op down the road, then walked back up Watlington Hill Road to the Ridgeway at the point at which we left it yesterday.

We initially continued along the base of the ridge, on the same line that we had been following yesterday, but for some reason it seemed more enjoyable today. There were lots of pretty summer flowers (including poppies in the fields) and views to Britwell Salome House and Monument. Just before we turned off the track we caught our first glimpse of the cooling towers of Didcot Power Station in the distance.

We crossed a couple of roads and then turned left onto a footpath which climbed, initially gently and then more steeply, up to Dean Wood. As we climbed we were on the edge of an undulating field of oil seed rape and poppies - very colourful. The wood at the top was pretty too. We continued to climb, then descended, then climbed again. This undulation became something of a theme for the next few miles - it was glorious walking.

The other theme was grand houses - we passed Swyncombe House and popped into the 11th Century Church of St Botolph, then less than a mile (but a climb and slight descent later) we passed the attractive house at Ewelme Park.

We emerged opposite Nuffield Church, a pretty place with an unusual tower, and from Nuffield to the start of Grim's Ditch is only a short distance. It was just about midday when we got there and there was conveniently placed log, so we stopped for an early 'first lunch' - recognising that my legs would want another break later. Behind us, a local farmer was making rather a mess of trying to round up his sheep.

The next 3.5 miles were along Grim's Ditch. No-one seems to know the origin of the ditch but it is clearly ancient feature and the walking, sometimes in the ditch and sometimes alongside it, was lovely. We were initially walking through mature trees, but the general trend from east to west was towards smaller trees and a more open ditch. The only problem was the need to negotiate the roots of the trees and unfortunately Richard tripped over one of them, flew through the air and landed flat on his face, hands and knees. Fortunately the first aid kit was sufficient to patch him up and we were able to bend his spectacles back into shape...

We crossed a couple of minor roads and then the A4074 and after that the route was close to the A4130. We turned left onto a paved path past Mongewell (where what is marked as 'Carmel College' on the map appears to be a training 'college' for police dogs) and then through the Springs Hotel golf club. We eventually reached North Stoke. The section from the A4074 to North Stoke was perhaps the least attractive of today's walk, but North Stoke made up for it - a pretty village with thatched roofs and roses, a fascinating church with medieval wall paintings, and a bench on which we sat to eat our second lunch.

The route of the Ridgeway goes through the churchyard at North Stoke, and we emerged onto an overgrown section of path (it seems strange that this little bit is less walked than other sections, but that was the most obvious conclusion) through a field with more poppies. After running parallel to the River Thames for about 1.5 miles (since Mongewell) we at last actually got to walk alongside the river for a delightful mile or so. It initially felt surprisingly rural (we walked through a couple of fields of cows and there were only occasional boats on the river). Then we passed under a viaduct carrying the railway, and - at least on the opposite bank - it felt more as I'd remembered the Thames in this area: a school and then a hotel with posh-looking river frontages, and moored boats.

The path left the river and brought us into South Stoke, another pretty village, but our attention was quickly taken by signs advertising the village's community shop - ahha, an opportunity for an ice cream at last! The shop was actually slightly out of the village centre, in a portacabin on the playing field the other side of the railway, but the ice cream was lovely and we sat alongside a collection of parents who had collected their offspring from the village school and were now supervising them at the playground.

From South Stoke, the path heads back towards the river and along to Goring-on-Thames, but we couldn't see a great deal of the river, first because of the vegetation and then later because we were walking along a path with fences on both sides, no doubt with private river frontages behind the fences to our right. We reached Goring High Street and turned right briefly, just to take a look at the bridge that leads over the river to Streatley, then we walked back up the High Street to the Station. We caught the 16.42 stopping train to London Paddington and then the 18.44 train from Kings Cross home.

Following leg on Ridgeway