The Ridgeway West - Day 3

The Ridgeway - West

By Mark Walford Day Three Route:Letcombe Regis to Goring on Thames Distance: 16m (26km) Elevation: 748ft (228m) to 134ft (41m) Climbing (ascent and descent): 629ft (192m) and 1223ft (373m) Prev

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Memorials, flint and affluence ...

Breakfast offered some unusual menu items, one of which was shakshuka — a Middle Eastern dish of spicy tomato sauce and poached eggs. I opted for it out of curiosity, and unexpectedly the others followed suit. It turned out to be excellent, even allowing for the oddness of it as a breakfast choice. I liked it enough to download the recipe afterward, and have made it several times since.
Meanwhile Jess had got chatty with some fellow diners and discovered that one of them had also opted out of the day's walking. She was getting a taxi to Goring and invited Jess to share the fare, which was happily accepted.
Our own cabs arrived on time, and Jess and her new companion set off for Goring with a smile and, I suspect, a quiet sense of relief at not having to walk sixteen miles in soaring heat. Colin had meanwhile vanished. Bod and I stood in the courtyard while the driver left her engine idling and glanced meaningfully at her watch. Colin eventually reappeared, muttering something about his bladder leaking — the one in his rucksack, I assumed — and we were whisked off, back up the steep lane that tops out at the dusty crossroads.
While making our final adjustments I noticed the couple from Monday evening, the only other guests at the forlorn bar-guesthouse. They were doing the Ridgeway as well, it turned out, and for such a popular walk they were the only other people we encountered following the same route from start to finish.
We set off for the final day. The familiar white track and hedgerows led us away from Letcombe Regis and out across south Oxfordshire, the sun beating down from a clear sky and offering sixteen miles of being baked and gently sunburnt. I had remembered to pack my cooling towel this time, and it proved a crucial piece of kit. Wet through and snapped taut a few times, it cooled down with something close to magic and stayed pleasantly cold for an hour or more. I wore it like a scarf all day and became thoroughly addicted to its cold embrace.
The taxi driver had warned us about a stretch of A-road we'd have to cross, advising caution and adding that many Ridgeway walkers opt to be dropped beyond it specifically to avoid the crossing. I wondered, a little cynically, whether she was hoping we'd take the same option and bump up her fare in the process. When we eventually reached the road — entirely empty of traffic — we walked perhaps ten yards alongside it, crossed, and left it behind. Almost anticlimactic.
The pattern for the day's walking established itself within the first hour. I made my usual stops for photographs and filming, which inevitably put distance between me and the others. Colin, no longer accompanying Jess, stepped up to keep pace with Bod — ahead of me now rather than behind. Sometimes they dwindled out of sight altogether; sometimes I caught up with them resting at a water stop or taking in a view. I was in no danger of getting lost and was happy enough left to my own devices. I passed a strange collection of buildings just beyond a small wooded copse — utilitarian, almost militaristic in feel, with something faintly foreboding about them. I looked for any sign of life in the many vacant windows and found none.
A few minutes later I caught up with Colin and Bod at a crossroads bordered by open grassy fields. We had all heard a strange low thrumming from somewhere above and stood scanning the horizon together. I remarked that it sounded almost like a Tangerine Dream track — low, thrumming, faintly organic. It turned out to be a military helicopter, which eventually appeared overhead and droned away westward like an enormous, sonorous dragonfly.
Shortly after this we came across a war memorial of sorts — a stone pillar topped with a weathered cross. The Wantage Memorial, erected for Robert Loyd-Lindsay, 1st Baron Wantage, co-founder of the British Red Cross. An odd, remote spot to site such a thing — its only audience surely Ridgeway walkers and the occasional passing cow — but impressive nonetheless.
The scenery had shifted subtly, so I paused once more to remark on it to camera. The open views had closed in, the great plains below now invisible, replaced by larger trees and thicker hedgerows — quintessential rural England. I set off again, and predictably, within half an hour we were back on the wide white path, open grassy meadow stretching away on either side, the sweeping views restored.
For a few pleasant miles we all walked together, enjoying the sense of space and the great blue dome of sky overhead. This was a busier stretch — dog walkers, day hikers, horse riders, even a police car patrolling up and down across the turf, its officers pausing to make sure we were keeping hydrated. There could have been no finer spot for lunch, so we found a suitable grassy verge and reclined gratefully, watching horses and dogs and people pass by, drowsing in the warmth, idly speculating on how many miles remained. Bod reckoned we were well over halfway.
When we got moving again I noticed Colin rise on stiff and sore legs, and was relieved to discover I wasn't the only one feeling the accumulated mileage. Bod, as ever, seemed entirely unaffected.
Toward the end of this grassy plain, a young man approached us looking harassed and anxious. He had lost his dog and wanted to know if we'd seen a young Labrador running loose. We hadn't, and hoped he'd find her soon. As he hurried off, I looked at Bod.
"Let's hope it doesn't get into a sheep field," he said, echoing exactly what I had been thinking.
The grassy plain ended abruptly at a track leading down through scrubby woodland to a concrete underpass — incongruous in these surroundings, carrying the traffic of the busy A34 over our heads. It was wide and broad, its walls painted, with some genuine skill, by local villagers. The murals depicted historical scenes, the paint peeling away in patches over time, giving the whole thing a faintly dystopian air.
Leaving the muted roar of traffic behind, we entered a section of the Ridgeway that began to undulate and twist, lined with scrubby trees and gorse-like shrubs. The confinement only raised the humidity, so the steeper sections demanded more from already tired legs. We began encountering small groups of cyclists — not previously a feature of the walk — rattling past in gaudy Lycra and wraparound shades. We reached a little hollow in the trail and decided to stop and rehydrate.
Without any real discussion, we all simply lay back and dozed in the shade of a small dense tree.
Through closed eyes I registered the murmur and buzz of insects, the occasional swish of a passing bike, and the gentle sound of a snoring Bod. After a while I became aware of something settling on my face, opened my eyes, and discovered that the tree above us was releasing clouds of billowing seeds wrapped in white gossamer thread. We were all liberally dusted and the seeds clung to us stubbornly for the next several miles.
The trail continued twisting and undulating before widening and levelling out again on high ground, the compacted white soil so typical of this walk underfoot once more. I had noticed throughout the journey that certain sections were strewn with chips of flint, and had it in mind to pocket a few to bring home to Sue, who works them into jewellery. When I next caught up with Bod and Colin I spotted a particularly rich patch and decided to collect a few decent specimens. I leaned forward, my pack unpleasantly heavy on my shoulders, legs screaming their objection.
"Uuuurrrgghh — I don't like it, I don't like it, I don't LIKE IT!" I groaned, stooping ever lower, which amused Colin no end.
I managed a few good fragments and rose again, creaking and red-faced. Serves me right, probably — I'm fairly sure picking up flint along the route isn't strictly encouraged. In my defence, I can confirm that Sue made some lovely pendants out of the pieces.
As the day drew to a close, the trail changed character once more, descending gently as the chalk gave way to a woodland path beneath a tall, green canopy. The descent continued for some distance, Colin and Bod far ahead and out of sight. It was pleasantly cool under the trees and I fell into an easy pace behind a woman with two capering dogs some way ahead. Eventually I could see the trail running down to a T-junction with a metalled road, down Bod and Colin already waiting there.
This road marked the end of the high trail we had been following for well over forty miles, and would carry us into the town of Goring, Wayland's Smithy our fourth and final stop. We reached the outskirts and meandered through its winding streets, looking for the pub where Jess was waiting. As is always the case at the end of a long day's walking, the final stretch seemed to stretch like elastic, and Goring showed no particular hurry about delivering us to the banks of the Thames. We found a decent-looking pub down along the way — not the right one, but we were hot, tired and thirsty enough not to care — and stopped for a celebratory pint, congratulating ourselves on finishing before setting off again toward the river, where pleasure boats glided past and handsome properties lined the banks. Goring had a prosperous air about it, an understated but unmistakable hum of middle-class comfort. We passed a run of upmarket shopfronts before spotting Jess outside a pub, down waving both arms to flag us down.
She had spent an enjoyable day in Goring with her new friend and had sampled a beer or two while waiting. We happily joined her, and spent a good while drinking cold beer and trading stories from the previous three days. We all agreed it would have been far too easy to lose the rest of the evening at that bar, so we reluctantly finished our drinks and made our slow, aching way to the side road where our accommodation waited.
Melrose Cottage Wayland's Smithy was an unpretentious bed and breakfast run by a lovely woman named Rose, with a huge garden where Bod and I sat for a very civilised cup of tea while we chatted to her. I couldn't quite work out how a garden of that size was managed by one elderly woman on her own, until she mentioned she brought in help through the week — and sure enough, I soon spotted a youth trundling a wheelbarrow between two greenhouses, as if conjured specifically to answer the question.
Later we limped back into Goring for an excellent Indian meal, with the obligatory Indian beers, before returning to Melrose Cottage for an early night ahead of the long journey home.
We had thoroughly enjoyed our three days on the Ridgeway — its open views, its sense of accumulated history — and over a generous breakfast from Rose the next morning, we all made a loose, unspoken commitment to come back one day and finish the eastern section. Exactly when that might happen depends partly on Colin and Jess's next visit to the UK, so it remains an open-ended sort of promise. For my part, I can't wait to get back onto that ancient trail, dodgy knee and questionable fitness notwithstanding. Hopefully not in a heatwave next time, though — which probably means we'll be walking it through a deluge instead.
Such are the vagaries of English weather.

Colin and Jess on the trail

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