Walking Class Hero: A Capital Idea
Welcome to Walking Class Hero a regular blog about walking and the walking environment. Whether you like walking on your own, with friends or in an organised group this blog will cover it. It’ll embrace walking in cities and towns and villages. Walking in the countryside and along the coast and up hills and down dales. Walking through parks and by rivers and across heath and down and moor. It’ll comment on public rights of way, access to open country, permissive paths, public urban space and countryside protection. Basically if you can walk there it’ll be in this blog
A Capital Idea (Saturday 13 March)
Metropolitan Walkers – a Hike group in London – can lay good claim to be the most successful Ramblers group of the last few years. Formed in 2002 from just a handful of eager walkers that organised 2 walks a month it now has over 1000 members and puts on at least 5 walks each and every week. So popular has it become that it is not unusual for their walks to have over 50 participants and for the leader they have now become more of a question of crowd control than navigation. Started as a group that targeted walkers in their 20’s and 30’s today they find a significant portion of their membership in their 40’s. These realities and more has led them consider the need to set up a new group that caters for those in their late 30’s through to early 50’s. (What we used to call middle aged – are we allowed to say that in these politically correct times?) They’re calling this group Capital Walkers.
It was a (relatively) early start Saturday morning ‘cos we had to get to Goring & Streatley station by 10 am. A morning of showering, listening to the Today programme, feeding the cat, getting the slow cooker packed and switched on, deciding 3 layers was plenty, lacing up the boots and buying the Guardian on the way to Richmond station. Heading for Reading I had time to read the Sports section and peruse the property porn – we’re moving to Huddersfield this week. Went there once and quite liked it actually.
At the station there was 20 of us ready for our 12 mile (18 km) Goring circular walk. (I counted 21 which caused a bit of confusion later on. Note to everybody else, if the walk is nothing to do with me don’t let me head count!) Before you get to Goring you go through Pangbourne. This where Kenneth Grahame retired to and E H Shepherd’s famous illustrations from Wind in the Willows was supposedly inspired by the countryside round here. Goring is prime commuter country of about 4000 residents including at one time in its past, George Michael. The Goring Gap is an interesting geological feature caused by the River Thames breaking through the hills and so making its way to the sea east of London. The river runs from north to south here between the Berkshire Downs and the Chilterns. It was soon obvious that 3 layers was about 2 too many when the sun was out, it was warm enough to work up a sweat when walking uphill. Spotted some great clumps of snowdrops as we wound our way through the Oxfordshire/Berkshire countryside. There has been some comment lately that your south eastern variety are slow this year – way behind those up t’north in places like Skiddaw. These ones looked quite majestic in the warm spring sun to me though.
After lunch we briefly stopped at St Mary’s church, Aldworth to have a look at the effigies of the De La Beche family – known locally as the Aldworth Giants. They’re quite literal here ‘cos one of the knights would’ve been over 7 feet tall had this been an accurate representation of him. Anyway the family was famous back in the 1270’s when Edward I was on the throne. It was after this brief excursion that my miscounting caused a problem when we thought we’d lost somebody. Good job that ‘cos we’re a new group we take a register beforehand. (So we’ve got everybody’s email addresses to send them future walks programmes.) Checking this we found there were only 20 to start with – d’oh.
We continued to make good time through the gently undulating Chiltern Hills and when we reached the river decided to stop at the Beetle and Wedge. Here I had a nice pint of Henley Amber, most others had tea or hot chocolate – hmmm. We only had a couple miles to do after that – all alongside the Thames. Back in Goring a few of us stopped at the Catherine Wheel for a quick drink before catching our various trains home. This time it was Brakspeare’s Oxford Gold for me.
The walk was led by first-timers, James and Dawn, and a good job they made of it. The next walk is a Godalming circular starting from the station at 11 am on Saturday March 27. The new walks programme running from April to June is out next week. You can join the Capital Walkers group on their Facebook page and check out their web presence through the link below.
More information
Ramblers Business Plan 2009/10
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0PWPm8-aLKw&feature=player_embedded
Useful links:
o The Ramblers http://www.ramblers.org.uk/
o Capital Walkers http://capitalwalker.blogspot.com/2010_01_01_archive.html
o Capital Walkers Facebook http://tinyurl.com/yzum8sw
o Metropolitan Walkers: http://www.metropolitan-walkers.org.uk/
o Kenneth Grahame http://www.kennethgrahamesociety.net/
o E H Shepherd http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/E._H._Shepard
o Goring http://www.goring-gap.co.uk/
o George Michael http://www.georgemichael.com/
o Aldworth Giants http://tinyurl.com/yjde3ur
o Beetle and Wedge http://www.beetleandwedge.co.uk/
o Henley Amber http://www.lovibonds.co.uk/
o Brakspear’s Oxford Gold http://www.brakspear.co.uk/
Listen to:
La Habitacion Roja – Capital
Simple Minds – Capital City
George Michael – Faith
Sieben – Spring Snowdrop
Sieben – Winter Snowdrop
Albion Dance Band – Snowdrop Polka