Walking: the Ridgeway, the Ilsleys and Farnborough

Today we tried another of the walks from the book of "adventurous" walks in the Thames Valley, but went for one with a slightly higher difficulty rating rather than a long flat walk near the river; a 12-mile circuit, starting from the car park on the Ridgeway near the West Ilsley junction of the A34 and taking in East Ilsley and the village of Farnborough (former home of John Betjemen, and not the town in Hampshire where I went to sixth form college) before returning to the car park via West Ilsley.



This was definitely a more interesting walk than last week's, if still not really what I'd describe as "adventurous" (and also not in the Thames Valley, but in the Berkshire Downs); there was a reasonable amount of generally fairly gentle up and down, and the walk varied between open downland, lanes with high hedges on either side, woodland and huge fields of barley, wheat and beans. We saw skylarks in the fields, lots of red kites (including three very close on one of the higher downs near Farnborough) and a least half a dozen swifts skimming over the pond in West Ilsley, while the higher sections had fabulous views out towards the Chilterns and over the Vale of White Horse (though the latter, inevitably, included Didcot Power Station in the foreground). It was a very pleasant walk and definitely one I'd do again, though not in the winter when the big fields have been ploughed.

It was also my first walk with my new Decathlon backpack (I went for this one, in purple because I like purple even if it is the ubiquitous "girly" option for walking gear) and I'm pretty happy with it. I think the back length is actually the same as my Osprey bag, but because the hip belt is actually a functional hip belt with padded bits at the sides it sits neatly on my hips and doesn't work its way up to my waist like the Osprey pack does. It felt a bit big for an afternoon walk of this kind; even with waterproofs, hoody and sandwich box there was still quite a lot of empty space, but that's partly because I hadn't transferred everything across from the organiser section of my other pack (I have ordered some zipped mesh bags to keep things tidy in the absence of an organiser section), and I'm sure I'll be glad of the space on longer walks. I'm planning to keep using the Osprey for work, as the organiser section and zipped main compartment are so useful for getting at purse/phone/book/swimming kit as needed, and keeping the wet swimming kit away from things that would do badly if exposeed to it; it's a bit annoying to have to have separate work and walking backpacks (and that's absolutely what I was trying to avoid) but it just doesn't seem to be possible to get a pack that will really do both jobs properly.

Reading: Felicities Maximized

Felicities Maximized is the last of the Comfortable Courtesan series (although since its publication last year, L.A. Hall has also published two volumes of 'Clorinda's Circle', supplementary stories set post-canon and/or focusing on other points of view - I reviewed A Man of Independent Mind here - and a third is due out later this month). At the start of the book, we find Clorinda in Naples where she is trying to put the unpleasant events that ended Invited Everywhere behind her; the novel covers her sojourn in Italy, journey home and a round of parties, balls and visits which results in all of the current loose ends in her circle being neatly tied up (including a very Shakespearean ending for one of her antagonists). It's as delightful and full of kindness and diversity as the rest of the series; I have bought hard copies of all of them, because I know that they will be comfort reads I'll return to again and again.