Tilehurst and Sulham (Nunhide Lane and Horsemoor Wood)

John Wilder's folly

Back home from St Lucia and back to reality with a walk on Berkshire clay with the M4 ever-present in the background.

This walk starts on the western edge of Tilehurst by the recreation ground in Little Heath Rd. You head west through Harefield Copse and soon emerge into open ground to pass by the red brick tower shown above, which the walk book helpfully identifies as John Wilder's folly. Wilder was apparently vicar of Sulham for 56 years until 1892. Unusually, I could find no further information from either of my most trusty sources: Pevsner and Google.

After passing a farm, the route goes along open fields and it becomes clear that the tower has been placed in a classic folly (foolish?) location on a ridge.



The route is now getting near to the M4 and the traffic noise mounts accordingly. The next stage in fact involves crossing the motorway to do a loop on the other side. Following the more-is-more philosophy applied to walking steps, we followed this route but were eventually beaten back by the second of two extensive areas of flooding. It was no loss.

Further field paths lead to the hamlet of Sulham and St Nicholas's church of 1838.



From here, and the nearby Sulham House, rebuilt by John Wilder, it becomes clear that the tower was carefully placed to provide a focal point at the end of a long vista.

Afterwards, Nunhide Lane leads to a lovely path across open country into woodland and then back to Little Heath Road.

From: Rambling for pleasure around Reading (first series) by David Bounds for the East Berkshire Ramblers.

Map: Explorer 159 (Reading, Wokingham and Pangbourne).

Conditions: cloudy becoming sunny, quite cold, very muddy underfoot.

Distance: 5 miles.

Rating: Two stars. Surprisingly open country so near to Reading, but marred by the constant noise. The extension across the motorway served to increase the step count, but was otherwise pretty pointless.


Sightings

Well we did see a kite, so all is not lost.

We also saw some early snow drops (I must learn how to get my camera to focus on small white subjects!).


And on the last leg of the walk we saw a Great Black-Backed gull standing out among a crowd of other gulls on a flooded field.