Finchampstead

Looking back from Wick Hill

A lovely Sunday morning and we decided to stretch ourselves a bit with this 7 mile walk around the sprawling village of Finchampstead. It starts by the Queen's Oak pub opposite the church. You soon ascend - if that's the right word - Wick Hill (86m) by means of a lovely field-side path. Soon after, you enter an area with more houses, including this one with a splendid gryphon on its ridge.


After walking along Heath Ride, a leafy road of large houses, you enter Simon's Wood and pass the delightful Heath Pond nature reserve. A family of Canada geese had taken up residence on the island.



The waterlilies were especially impressive ...



.... and the was another group of them, not so fully in flower, in one corner of the lake.

From here, a lovely track through the woods leads to Finchampstead ridges and then descends to reach the Moor Green Lakes nature reserve, where I walked recently in the reverse direction.

At the end of the reserve the path continues alongside the Blackwater river, with very extensive new gravel works on the right. A planning application sign indicated that these will become further natures reserves in due course. Where the new works were just starting it was interesting to see just how close to the surface the gravel deposits are.




The final section goes through the recreation ground, which is the closest Finchampstead has to a centre, and climbs a shady track back to the church.

From: Pub walks for motorists: Berkshire and Oxfordshire by Les Maple (Countryside Books).

Map: Explorer 159 (Reading and Pangbourne).

Rating: three and a half stars. Some really lovely bits, but some suburbia as well, and too many gravel works.


Sightings

We came on this new-born foal. Local residents who had come out to see it said it had been born only a hour previously.



Flower of the day

We saw a lot of this very pretty plant which looks like a wild geranium in the more wooded sections of Heath Ride. It is actually ...

Common Mallow