Ridgeway 2013 day 4

Friday 16^th August 2013 Goring to Wantage

Breakfast was my first-ever taste of kippers, after all those years as a kid seeing references to them in comics.  Quite a tasty smoked fish fillet, that I kept on re-tasting for most of the day.

Heading out to begin the “West Ridgeway”, I found the twin villages of Goring and Streatley quite quaint and noticed a film crew at a church in Goring.  I liked to imagine it was an episode of Midsomer Murders, the program that was the catalyst for this holiday!

Goring side of the river Thames

Streatley side of the river Thames

The guidebook mentioned that from here the Ridgeway would become more remote.  I guess that depends on what your background is.  It is true that there was a lack of villages and towns, but it was still through farmland with the occasional farmhouse visible, so it would not be hard to find someone if you had a reason to seek them out for help or directions.

It was along this stretch that I encountered a police sign, stating that a police operation was in progress.  As I saw not a soul in any direction, I guess the operation was extremely covert.

 

Passing through a tunnel beneath one road, I was simultaneously overjoyed and saddened.  Someone had the idea to brighten the walls of the tunnel with murals depicting historical events of the area.  Someone else had decided they did not appreciate the art, and had defaced it.

 

I stopped for lunch and was mesmerised by hundreds of thunder flies that suddenly found my rucksack so interesting they crawled all over it.

As I was about to cross the B4494 I passed an idling car where the male driver was either sleeping, unconscious, or dead.  I was tempted to bang on his window and ask him to stop polluting, but instead walked on by and, on the other side of the road, told a couple sitting in a van about the guy.  They said they would go over and check on him prior to leaving.

I passed by a number of horse gallop tracks (weirdly sans horses), which must have been practise tracks as they were not circular, had no buildings or structures, no car parks, and no people.  They seemed some kind of horse training ghost towns.  Later I was told they are mostly used on Saturdays, so I was a day early for all of the action.

My destination for the day was the Court Hill Centre, which was very busy despite the fact I had encountered no other walkers all day.  It seemed a lot of them were cycling, as there were bicycles galore around the place.

At dinner, I sat with a group of people who considered themselves storytellers.  Theirs was an unusual type of holiday, as the group of them would go to a place of significance and some of them would volunteer to tell impromptu stories, then they would head off to another location to do it all over again.  Apparently there were often multiple locations in a day, spread over a number of consecutive days.

Day 5