* Next day
I got off the train at Midgham station. It isn't in Midgham, but in the nearby village of Woolhampton. Make a note for your next pub quiz.
I'd planned this to be the last day of the walk. If all went to plan I'd arrive back at the Thames at Reading, 1124 elapsed days and 38 days of river-walking since I'd last passed it en route to Oxford (since when I've walked the rest of the Thames, the Severn, the Wye and the various rivers and canals from Chepstow).
And it was a really lovely day's walking. The weather was perfect, the river was by turns overgrown and open, winding around tight bends, through pastures and wetlands. At Aldermaston Wharf the locks were constructed with elegant scalloped sides, the first time I'd seen anything like it. Despite the fact that I was nearing Reading I had no feeling of the land becoming more populous, and the countryside was beautiful.
In places weeds and lilies filled much of the river, making it more organic and interesting that the carefully engineered channels I'd been following for the previous four or five days. And the edges weren't the precisely delineated boundaries of a canal but the more gradual and nature-friendly transition from wet to dry resulting from a river's constantly changing levels.
Through Sulhamstead, Theale, and Burghfield the river flowed across, or through, large gravel pits. Most of the gravel used for constructing the roads in the Home Counties came from here.
The Kennet goes under the M4 just east of Junction 12, then stays in open countryside almost all the way into the middle of Reading. When I first detected I was arriving, initially at the waterworks on Fobney Meadow and then opposite Brunel Retail Park, amazingly I was just a mile from the town centre. The path winds through the Coley district , with honest brick houses and terraces backing up to the rather pretty river. It was a side of Reading I hadn't seen before. 
Then abruptly I found myself outside Wagamama, Yo Sushi and the Oracle, and the place was packed with teenagers buying branded sportswear and Krispy Kreme Donuts. Even here the occasional narrow boat burbled past.
The Kennet, now in its last hurrahs, threaded its way through the old red brick town, taking me past places I knew well without knowing there was a river outside. Every time I've driven past the Huntley and Palmers building I've been stressed picking my way through fast traffic, and never noticed a bridge. But today a passing boatman and I nodded to each other below it, unworried by the mayhem above our heads.
A few minutes later I arrived at the Horseshoe Bridge, where the Kennet empties into the Thames. It had been nine days and about 110 miles since I'd crossed the Severn Bridge, and I hadn't felt a single drop of rain on the way.
On impulse I decided I wouldn't finish the walk there, but instead I'd keep heading east on whatever water I could find.
-- RodBird - 02 Jan 2011
Woolhampton to Reading
Day 9 : 8 Aug 2010
I got off the train at Midgham station. It isn't in Midgham, but in the nearby village of Woolhampton. Make a note for your next pub quiz.
I'd planned this to be the last day of the walk. If all went to plan I'd arrive back at the Thames at Reading, 1124 elapsed days and 38 days of river-walking since I'd last passed it en route to Oxford (since when I've walked the rest of the Thames, the Severn, the Wye and the various rivers and canals from Chepstow).
And it was a really lovely day's walking. The weather was perfect, the river was by turns overgrown and open, winding around tight bends, through pastures and wetlands. At Aldermaston Wharf the locks were constructed with elegant scalloped sides, the first time I'd seen anything like it. Despite the fact that I was nearing Reading I had no feeling of the land becoming more populous, and the countryside was beautiful.
In places weeds and lilies filled much of the river, making it more organic and interesting that the carefully engineered channels I'd been following for the previous four or five days. And the edges weren't the precisely delineated boundaries of a canal but the more gradual and nature-friendly transition from wet to dry resulting from a river's constantly changing levels.
Through Sulhamstead, Theale, and Burghfield the river flowed across, or through, large gravel pits. Most of the gravel used for constructing the roads in the Home Counties came from here.
The Kennet goes under the M4 just east of Junction 12, then stays in open countryside almost all the way into the middle of Reading. When I first detected I was arriving, initially at the waterworks on Fobney Meadow and then opposite Brunel Retail Park, amazingly I was just a mile from the town centre. The path winds through the Coley district , with honest brick houses and terraces backing up to the rather pretty river. It was a side of Reading I hadn't seen before.
Then abruptly I found myself outside Wagamama, Yo Sushi and the Oracle, and the place was packed with teenagers buying branded sportswear and Krispy Kreme Donuts. Even here the occasional narrow boat burbled past.
The Kennet, now in its last hurrahs, threaded its way through the old red brick town, taking me past places I knew well without knowing there was a river outside. Every time I've driven past the Huntley and Palmers building I've been stressed picking my way through fast traffic, and never noticed a bridge. But today a passing boatman and I nodded to each other below it, unworried by the mayhem above our heads.
A few minutes later I arrived at the Horseshoe Bridge, where the Kennet empties into the Thames. It had been nine days and about 110 miles since I'd crossed the Severn Bridge, and I hadn't felt a single drop of rain on the way.
On impulse I decided I wouldn't finish the walk there, but instead I'd keep heading east on whatever water I could find.
-- RodBird - 02 Jan 2011 Topic revision: r5 - 02 Jan 2011 - 21:57:47 - RodBird
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