Who ever thought walking could be this dangerous!!

A little bit of a late post for this one, but worth the wait! A couple of Saturdays ago (21st April), Julie and Jo took a break from the South Downs Way, in favour of a planned 16 mile walk along the Brenda Parker Way across north Hampshire.

Bluebell Lined Path

The route took us from Winchfield to Tadley, and after a little trouble finding the car park in Tadley, to leave one car at the end of the walk, we made our way back to Winchfield station for the starting point.

This unfamiliar route also gave Julie and Jo the chance to practice their newly acquired navigation skills honed the week before on the training walk with support team member Jeff.

The start of the walk followed the footpath next to the railway line, passing a Second World War pill box (more on those later) and in to a bluebell-lined woodland path.

This one is a 7/10!

This route took us over a fair number of stiles (which past readers will know Julie loves to assess!!) and we passed a fairy usual and innovative version which used an old log as the base which provided a large platform for you to put your feet on whilst climbing over the fence. Tickled by this unusual find, Julie awarded this one a 7 out of 10!

Alice in Wonderland path

Following on from the stile, the route took us across a field and then onto a footpath which seemed to get gradually narrower and narrower, and more and more enclosed until we had to crouch down and make ourselves as small as possible to continue down it.  It really was something like Alice in Wonderland and we were expecting a white rabbit to hop out of a bush muttering ‘I’m late, I’m late, I’m late’ at any moment.

Managing to make it out of the ever enclosing footpath, we soon found ourselves in the shadows of the impressive West Green House. West Green House is an 18th century building and is famously associated with General Henry Hawley, also know as ‘Hangman Hawley’ because of the brutality he showed to the Scots after the battle of Culloden. Nowadays the house is more famous for it’s beautiful gardens which are opened to the public at specific times of the year.

Skirting around the gardens of the house, we followed the footpath, with the sound of gunshots in the distance becoming louder and louder the further on we walked.  And then we saw a sign ‘Caution Shooting in Progress’ propped up against a tree with a red flag blowing in the wind next to it.

From the loud bangs, it was clear that the sign meant that there were people with live ammo and guns in the vicinity, rather than Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie shooting a Hollywood blockbuster in the wilderness of Hampshire! ‘Oh no’, said Julie, ‘What shall we do, we don’t want to get shot!’.

Having convinced Julie that the clay pigeon shooters probably wouldn’t aim for a couple of innocent walkers as a couple of larger targets, we continued down the route and were stopped by a lady who came running out a porter cabin yelling that she’d have to stop the shoot in order to let us pass. We weren’t entirely sure exactly which part of the field we needed to walk through but the instructions clearly stated that we needed to walk past two pill boxes and then turn right across the field before the next hedge to the gate at the bottom of the field. With this established, and the shoot stopped, we set off around the edge of the field, with the sound of a few rude ‘hurry up’ shouts from some of the shooters! We passed one pill box and carried along the path in search for the other before we crossed the field. This meant passing and ignoring a footpath across the field on our right hand side, however, the instructions said to pass 2 pill boxes, and as we didn’t want to get lost, we stuck to them like they were gospel. Soon enough we reached the edge of the field… no second pill box.  We’d now reached the hedge and there was no where else for us to go except right so we turned in this direction and continued around the edge of the field. Eventually we reached the far end of the field, and then had to turn right again in order to reach the gate. Now this detour couldn’t have taken us more than 5 minutes, and in the meantime the shooters had started firing again, however, one man made a point of walking over to us and demanding to know why we hadn’t crossed the field using the footpath in the centre of the field as we had ‘held up their shoot even longer’ by walking around the edge of the field.  We stated that our instructions had instructed us to head that way and we had to follow them. Plus as this was a public footpath we had a right to walk around the field any way we chose to!! Bloomin’ cheek!!

Having shut that man up, we exited the field sharpish before we did end up as a couple of extra targets, and were met by a wall of young bullocks blocking our way.

Having been charged at by a couple of bullocks on a previous walk up on the Isle of Skye, we’re a bit weary of these fellas now and skirted our way around them, choosing a path across a patch of stinging nettles, rather than trying to push a way through the cows.  Once safely around the edge of the group we headed across the field and turned around to see the cows had all started to follow us! Our pace quickened on noticing this, and Jo decided to use her walking poles as a defence mechanism by sticking them out behind her as a kind of cow protecting prong. We practically flung ourselves across the stile at the other end of the field in to the safety of the neighbouring one, which was thankfully free of men with guns and gangs of meddlesome teenage cows! Phew!

The scenery on the next part of the walk was particularly beautiful.  The sun was shining and we were surrounded by field upon field of bright yellow rape seed flowers.

However, this glorious sunshine was not set to continue.  The next part of our walk took us in to the woodland surrounding the National Grid sub-station and the rain began to pour down.  Luckily we were under cover for most of this part of the walk, and the smell of the surrounding bluebells was lovely.

However, we were soon out in to the open again and had to brave the downpours. We passed through the meadows of the Natural England’s Church Lane Farm site which was full of playful little lambs and their mums. I don’t think there was a tree without a tiny little lamb peeking his head around to look at us.

At this point the rain had been pouring down for a good hour and a half and the ground was getting boggier and stickier and soggier.  And we were getting soggier and colder and more fed up!  It’s surprising how much harder the rain makes walking, especially when you have to put more effort in to avoiding puddles and thick sticky mud. The area we were walking in floods very easily and at points it was hard to find a way around the path without having to attempt swimming across! We did find that walking poles are a useful tool to help you balance around the edge of flooded paths without falling into the puddle and ending up in a mess!

Our walk was now taking us in to the historic ancient Roman town of Silchester (one of Julie’s favourite places!).  The town is a haven for archeologists, who have had a dig, run by the University of Reading, going on here since 1997 - which Julie has actually taken part in herself before!  The Roman name for the town was Calleva Atrebatum.  It was established in the first centuary AD and was built on the site of an ancient Iron Age town called Calleva.  The Roman amphitheatre and ancient roman walls that can be found here are some of the best preserved in Britain and are open to the public.

Time was getting on at this point, and our directions also became quite confusing.  This resulted in a bit of tooing and froing backwards and forwards until we could make out where the directions wanted us to go.  We eventually found the path we needed to pick up and continued the last part of the journey on to Tadley. We finished the walk, cold, wet and tired in 8 hours 20 minutes, with a total distance of just under 20 miles. It appears that all the avoiding of the mud and flooded paths, and also taking the time to navigate the paths we needed to take and using the map to help us added considerable time on to our walk, so we completed it in a much longer time than we were aiming for.  However, we did managed to add an extra 4 miles on to our route (somehow!!?) so we have now pushed our training walk distance up to the next milestone.


...meanwhile Gem & Gubbs had a weekend off Trailwalker preparations, with Gubbs' parents, Lil and Steve. They did manage a small walk up to Chanctonbury Ring however (so kind of Trailwalker related...), and also spent time exploring Arundel Castle, which we'd recommend doing if you've not been there before.

Chanctonbury Ring was looking almost volcanic with the clouds gathering above...