Walking: Goring and the Chilterns
May. 5th, 2019 04:48 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
white_hartWe've pretty much exhausted the possibilities of the AA 50 Walks in Oxfordshire book, so I recently bought the Ordnance Survey's Thames Valley and Chilterns circular walks book to add to our collection. I rather like the way the OS books group their walks by approximate length; given that the forecast for today was grey and not particularly warm, we decided to go for one of the medium-length walks, a circuit in the Chilterns starting from Goring Station which turned out to be just over seven miles.
After a brief diversion to the bridge to look at the river, the walk headed away from the Thames and undulated gently through wooded hills and occasional fields. The woods were still coming into leaf, the new green of tiny spring leaves not quite forming a full canopy yet; the bluebells are on their way out but not over yet. The tree coverage meant that the grey skies were less noticeable than they would have been in more open country, and we heard woodpeckers several times, while the undulating terrain made the walk nicely challenging. One we'd do again, and worth venturing a bit further afield for. (We could even have done it by public transport, but getting a bus into Oxford and then a train to Goring would have taken quite a bit longer than just driving to Goring, and this way the car got a run out and we got to stop at Waitrose in Wallingford to shop for dinner.)
After a brief diversion to the bridge to look at the river, the walk headed away from the Thames and undulated gently through wooded hills and occasional fields. The woods were still coming into leaf, the new green of tiny spring leaves not quite forming a full canopy yet; the bluebells are on their way out but not over yet. The tree coverage meant that the grey skies were less noticeable than they would have been in more open country, and we heard woodpeckers several times, while the undulating terrain made the walk nicely challenging. One we'd do again, and worth venturing a bit further afield for. (We could even have done it by public transport, but getting a bus into Oxford and then a train to Goring would have taken quite a bit longer than just driving to Goring, and this way the car got a run out and we got to stop at Waitrose in Wallingford to shop for dinner.)
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Date: 2019-05-05 05:47 pm (UTC)Only just getting there here in Shropshire.