Wargrave and Hennerton backwater

St Mary's, Wargrave

Another sultry afternoon and a walk beside the river seemed the perfect choice. This 5 mile walk begins in the centre of Wargrave with a quick tour of its quiet streets. You soon reach the very pleasant church green with the church today being prepared for a medieval flower festival. The church itself was rebuilt after a fire in 1916, the early 17th century brick tower being the only part to survive.

We made a detour down Ferry Lane to see the public landing stage. It was striking how little of the village can be seen from the river. Then in School Lane we came on the Woodclyffe Hostel, now the public library, an art nouveau-influenced building of 1905.


Round the corner in the High Street we were staggered by the Woodclyffe Hall - having driven past several times before without ever noticing it. We were not surprised to learn from Pevsner that both these buildings were the work of the same architect, Cole A Adams.



After continuing along the main road for a while, the route turns left into Willow lane, and you cross the Hennerton Backwater, which is apparently the longest on the Thames. Its appearance is fairly nondescript, resembling perhaps a narrow canal. Continuing along Willow Lane, a road of large houses, you eventually turn left down a small path and emerge on the river bank, which looks very inviting.


We walked along the bank pondering the large houses on the Shiplake side opposite: lovely houses, but lacking in privacy and exposed to noise from people on the river, for example the three young lads in kayaks who were going on and on about the difficulties of kayak travel.

Eventually an island in the river enabled us to enter a quieter more rural section ....



... and very soon we were in deeper undergrowth as we skirted Wargrave Marsh. The final section through woodland brought us to our destination: the point where the Hennerton backwater departed the main river, prior to its return at Wargrave. This could only we described as an anticlimax: there was nothing to see and the woodland was so dense that there was nowhere to see it from.

Then we retraced our steps.

From: Rambling for Pleasure Along the Thames by David Bounds for the East Berkshire Ramblers Group.

Map: Explorer 159 (Reading, Wokingham and Pangbourne.

Rating: two stars. Wargrave is certainly an interesting place and we did see some nice things, but there was too much road and and a there-and-back walk really needs a bit of a wow factor when you get there.


Sightings

We startled a heron into flight as we went along the bank and we saw a pair of kites flying low over Wargrave. The reintroduction of kites in our area has clearly been extremely successful - it as rare walk in Berkshire now where you don't see one, or more usually a pair.


Flower of the day

We didn't see many flowers at all, but this Great Yellow Cress caught the eye in a couple of places on the river bank.