White Hill

Today’s walk was all about the views.

We’ve previously done a walk starting at White Hill, just outside Kingsclere, but today we headed the opposite direction, past the gallops and the beautiful Watership Down (inspiration for the novel by Richard Adams). It’s not a book, or film (animation) that I can read or watch without crying and to be honest even hearing the song Bright Eyes by Art Garfunkel sets me off.

It was a beautiful sunny day, a little too warm for our choice of clothing and boots, but you can never tell and we certainly weren’t complaining (not too much anyway).

We set off along the Wayfarer’s Walk, a 70 mile long distance walking route that starts at Combe Gibbet. Not sure we’d manage the whole route, but we can do bits and pieces.

As well as the spectacular views we saw some square trees and a trig point (so it must be a prominent hill). I think we’re easily pleased with our finds.

Once we’d walked up past the gallops and Watership Down the path headed downhill, eventually coming out on a lane (with a very convenient layby for parking – a note was made for a future walk). The Wayfarer’s Walk continued across the road, heading for Sydmonton (home of Andrew Lloyd Webber and on the list for a walk, especially now we’ve found a parking spot). Our other option was his driveway, but I’m not sure he’d be too pleased. Today however, we turned left and followed the lane up a hill until we found another footpath sign.

The path ran alongside a private driveway until about halfway up where there were two stiles, one on each side of the drive. The first was quite high, the second quite wobbly, so there was a bit of assisting, but we made it over and into a field full of sheep. While we were negotiating the second stile we noticed a car driving up the private driveway. Oddly it stopped shortly before us. I’m not sure if we were under observation, but presumably they decided three ladies of a certain age were probably harmless. Eventually, when we were halfway across the field they carried on.

I don’t think the sheep were too impressed with us trying to find the next stile, especially the ones in the corner we were heading towards, and they all scattered before us.

Third stile conquered we headed around the edge of a field and popped back out at the top of the gallops. Heading back we found a fenced in tree with a couple of plaques dedicated to Richard Adams, and the rabbits.

Finally back to the car we discovered we had walked 3.9 miles – perhaps we should have walked up and down a bit to round it up to 4.

Driving back to Overton we found another Honesty Cafe for a very welcome sit-down and lunch. It was very nice, but ‘our’ Honesty cafe in Dummer is still our favourite.