Ufton

Ufton Court

A cool, cloudy afternoon, with the threat of rain - but also the only chance of getting out for a mid-week walk this week. So I decided on this short (4 miles), local walk.

It begins at the Round Oak pub on the road from Burghfield to Tadley. The first section of the walk follows two wide trails through an area of pine woods called Roundoak Piece. You pass a small pond, Oval Pond, which had some nice waterlilies on the far side.

You leave the wood and follow the road round to the entrance to Ufton Court. We passed Ufton Court on an earlier walk from Ufton Nervet - that posting has some notes on its history.

A sunken lane leads past medieval fish ponds to Old Farm, and from here a mixture of lane and woodland lead back to the start. The map - and indeed the terrain - shows an earthwork named Grimm's Bank, and maybe this is fanciful naming echoing the Grimm's Ditches and Dykes in other parts of the country.

From: Village walks in Berkshire by Berkshire Federation of Women's Institutes (Countryside Books)

Map: Explorer 159 (Reading, Wokingham and Pangbourne)

Rating: three stars. Did the job.


Flower of the day

Very little to choose from, although I did see a couple of wild honeysuckles. The signature plant for this walk was the foxglove which could be seen throughout and which provided intense bursts of colour on what was otherwise a very drab afternoon.

Foxglove