Henley – Oxfordshire Way – Middle Assendon – Bix – Lambridge Wood

3 Sept 2006

• Total distance: 6 miles
• Start point: Henley on Thames SU 757833
• Weather: Bright sun and very strong wind.
• Temperature at start: 25C.
• Muddiness rating: * (*=dry, *****=awful)
• People passed: Seven people in two groups.
• Step counter 12105
• Camera: Olympus C-5060W. Images taken before deletions = 60.

I’ve walked in this area dozens of times, though not for a few months. Revisiting it reminded me what a spectacular place it is for scenery, and how many good footpaths there are in the vicinity.

It’s possible to walk straight out into the Chiltern hills from Henley town centre. Parking in the town isn’t easy during weekdays, but on a Sunday I usually find somewhere without much difficulty. Regatta week would be an obvious exception (but I’d advise staying well away from the place then anyway, unless you want your walk accompanied by a background hum of the blazered classes hooting to each other over their Pimms).

The Oxfordshire Way footpath climbs out of Henley just east of the rugby club, and passes a grove of mature box trees on the left. Box (Buxus sempervivens) is a slow growing evergreen tree, customarily kept small in gardens but able to grow to three or four meters high in the UK if left alone. It produces a very heavy, grainless wood which has been used since the Middle Ages for carving and inlays. An old great-uncle of mine, a plumber, used to distract the infant me for a few minutes by letting me bash lead off-cuts with his boxwood mallet. I can still recall its smooth, rather cold feel as I picked it up (and he undoubtedly shuddered at the horrible sticky feel when he got it back, God bless him).

The track up to the top of Round Hill looks straight and uninteresting on the map, but it’s lovely. Until a few years ago it used to cross a large field full of pigs but that’s now been turned over to crops, bringing its olfactory rating back into line. The path crosses the narrow lane between Fawley and Lower Assendon, before heading off across a wide and apparently uninteresting field. Then, just when you think your daily allocation of vistas has been exhausted, you’re treated to a stunning view north along the Assendon valley. It’s at its best in late summer, its dusky pink fields freshly ploughed and rolled, its pastures and just-going-over beech woods providing contrasting hues of green.

At the side of the road in Middle Assendon lies a large, very smooth boulder which looks as if it should have some significance – like, for instance, the Tarry Stone near Cookham Bridge. But I haven’t been able to trace any, so if you know any tales about it, please let me know. Just opposite there’s a nice looking pub called the Rainbow, and if I wasn’t Chairman of the Berkshire League for Total Abstinence I’d have gone in for a quick one. Instead I pressed on up the hill towards Bix, stopping only to help myself to a handful of damsons from the hedge. They were surprisingly sweet so a few steps later, impressed with the cornucopia of free fruit, I availed myself of a plump sloe from a neighbouring tree.

Blimey. If you’ve ever accidentally drunk a bottle of Cillit Bang, you’ll have an idea what an unripe sloe tastes like. It was so sour it sucked all the moisture out of my mouth, caused a loud hiss in both ears and shrivelled my head to the size of a small walnut. It took me days to recover.

Recently I’ve been capturing images as RAW files. The Olympus takes nine or ten seconds to write each one to the memory card - much longer than JPEGs, but not a problem for landscape pictures. So far I can’t say I’ve seen much benefit, but it feels better to be working with the core data rather than with something that’s been processed. One thing I’ve noticed is that on first inspection the RAWs are softer. Perhaps surprisingly that doesn’t disappoint me: RAW is pretty much what the camera sees and if the JPEG looks sharper that’s because some sort of unsharp masking has been done. I’d sooner be in control of that myself. I’m happy to admit I’ve got a lot to learn, though.

From Bix the path leads down to Henley, through Lambridge Woods. This well-managed forest of often huge beech trees is easy and pleasant to walk through. I caught a glimpse of an antler through the trees and, stepping quietly through the shadows came across a captive herd of fifteen fallow deer grazing beside a road, just the other side of a fence.

As I neared habitation a movement beside the path caught my eye. A slow-worm was curving silently through the grass, and I got down close to study it – the first time I’ve been able to get such a good look at one. It was a unique colour, which people have said is difficult to describe, though “iridescent metallic pinky brown” seems about right.

Click here for map > HenleyBixmap

Choose another walk > TheWalks

Woods in use in the Middle Ages> http://www.medievalwoodworking.com/articles/wood.htm

-- RodBird - 10 Sep 2006