Winchester

Had a city break with Mum in Winchester a couple of weekends ago. Think our previous break was in Birmingham, which looking back at the blog was in 2014 - longer ago than I thought.

Mum caught an early train to Reading on the Saturday morning and I drove us down, having elected to drive given the location of Winchester’s Premier Inn not far off the M3 – though in the event it wasn’t quite as easy to locate as we’d expected, thanks to unclear signage from the motorway. We parked and walked down into the city centre, visited the tourist information place in the old Guildhall and then went to find somewhere for lunch, ending up at Bistro La Place close to the cathedral.

After lunch we did a short walk around the city courtesy of a leaflet we’d picked up at the tourist place. This started from King Alfred’s statue at the end of the High Street and set off towards the City Bridge, where we diverted to visit the City Mill thanks to our National Trust cards. Quite interesting, especially the lower level where you can cross over the millrace to look at the waterwheel. Nice little garden area out the back. After that we walked along the pretty River Itchen past the city walls, paused briefly to watch some charmingly polite prep school boys playing cricket (sporting shouts of “Oh, good fielding!” from one boy as one of his colleagues managed to stop a ball) and went to look at Wolvesey Castle, the ruined former bishops' palace.

Walked past the house where Jane Austen breathed her last and went to have a look at the darling little church of St Swithun-upon-Kingsgate, accessed by a staircase to one side of the medieval city gate. Briefly visited a secondhand book fair outside the Deanery before finishing the walk outside the cathedral. We spent some time looking round the cathedral, though Mum was disappointed that the full view down the nave wasn’t possible due to it being screened for some building work. Visited the crypt – I’m never sure whether Sound II is actually meant to be standing in water, or whether the crypt just floods intermittently – on the day we visited the floor appeared largely dry but with distinct damp patches. This says that the crypt does flood during rainy months.

On the Saturday evening we went for dinner at The Wykeham Arms, a pub that appeared from a bit of pre-trip research to have a decent reputation. Indeed it was very nice, with an atmospheric bar and cosy restaurant area, which was certainly packed out with diners. Ruth, who got her degree from what’s now the University of Winchester but was then King Alfred’s College, informs me that she had her family graduation dinner there, though that would have been some years back. Although this 'top 10 places to eat in Winchester' resource reckons it's a favourite of Colin Firth's, we didn't spot him.

King Alfred	Mum by the City Mill
The River Itchen	Wolvesey Castle

On the Sunday we had breakfast at the hotel before setting off to do a walk courtesy of a Ramblers’ Association '14 Walks in and around Winchester' booklet Mum had bought at the tourist information place the day before. I’m saying Ramblers’ Association, but in fact I’ve just noticed that the organisation appears to have renamed itself The Ramblers. Perhaps the word ‘association’ was considered to sound too earnest for the modern age.

The walk we chose was the 'Winchester - St Cross - St Catherine's Hill' walk of about 4 miles, though in fact for us it was about six miles due to the walk in from the hotel and back. Followed the 'Weirs' walkway from the City Bridge along the old City wall, then past some school buildings to follow a pretty path between the River Itchen and a mill stream, where we saw some adorable weeny ducklings. Further on we passed the stunning Hospital of St Cross, apparently the largest medieval almshouse in Britain. Later we moved into some interesting transport history, joining Five Bridges Road, now closed to traffic but apparently formerly the A333 - hard to believe now. One end of it met the former Winchester Bypass at the Hockley Interchange, an apparently notorious crossroads - the good chaps at SABRE have an article on the Winchester Bypass plus lots of pics of it at various stages of its life. It's now completely gone - seemingly as some sort of compensation to the locals for putting the M3 through Twyford Down.

Part of the old city wall	Water meadows
Hockley Viaduct	Mum descending St Catherine's Hill

Close to the old junction there's also the remains of a Victorian railway bridge and a path leading up onto the Hockley Viaduct, which once carried a railway line but is now a footpath. We went up onto the viaduct to have a brief look, before turning back towards Winchester along a path that follows the Itchen Navigation, a disused canal. Detoured off the path again when we got to St Catherine's Hill, as I fancied going up it - in fact we didn't go all the way up, but far enough to get good views of the surrounding area. After that we followed the Itchen Navigation back into the city and ate some M&S sandwiches sitting in the Abbey Gardens, before Mum walked back to the hotel and I looked around the shops briefly. In the evening we ate dinner at Prezzo.

Dinner at Prezzo

On the Monday morning we went for breakfast at the lovely Forte Kitchen, where Mum had Eggs Benedict and I had a stack of pancakes and bacon. We rounded off the stay with a walk through the Winnall Moors Nature Reserve. The link suggests quite a range of wildlife that one might see there, but we failed to see anything though were taunted by interesting-sounding bird calls from within the reeds. We also failed to spot a single water vole the entire weekend, despite lots of signs telling us there were voles aplenty in the area. Here's a photo of one on the Itchen Navigation.

Boardwalk at Winnall Moors Nature Reserve, where Mum didn't see a sedge warbler

Winchester; subway intrigue; women's football

Have been forgetting to take a photograph of our new floating shelves in bedroom 2. Although they do enhance the room and look quite good from this sort of angle, they are best not viewed sideways on. Additionally, we ran again into problems with drilling into powdery mortar and not being able to get a good purchase for the fixings, hence the minimal decoration. There’s got to be a way around this, other than resorting to Loctite.


Took a train trip to Winchester on Saturday to visit the Christmas market. Ruth went to college in Winchester (when the now-university was still King Alfred’s College) so has an affection for it; additionally we spent a lovely pre-Christmas day and night there five years ago. The train journey down was enlivened by some Reading fans getting in voice for an away game at Southampton, but luckily we were able to get off after 40 minutes and make our way into the city which was, I guess not surprisingly, heaving with bodies. We managed to snaffle an outside table at Maison Blanc where we had tea and a snack, and then meandered over to the cathedral close to join the queue to go into the Christmas market. Queue luckily moved fairly quickly, but we were obliged to shuffle round the stalls at a snail’s pace due to the mass of humanity. I restricted my purchases to two small tree decorations; I don’t think Ruth bought anything at the market but did buy a dress in Hobbs on the way there.

After having our fill of the market, we briefly considered looking round the cathedral until we discovered it’s now charging £6.50 entrance fee (subsequently mentioned this to Mum, who was suitably appalled), so went for a walk instead to use up the remaining daylight, after which we crammed into the William Walker for a couple of drinks before proceeding to the Old Vine, where Ruth had booked a table for an early dinner. We spent a night at the Old Vine on the 2007 trip mentioned above – lovely room and food and a great position overlooking the cathedral.

Quite excited to learn from the latest issue of Reading Station News (a publication introduced to keep passengers up-to-date vis-à-vis ‘the exciting changes ahead’ as Reading’s railway interchange and station undergoes a major refurb) that a formerly closed subway is to be temporarily re-opened while the footbridge linking the north entrance multi-storey car park with the station is removed early in the new year, pending the opening of a splendid new passenger bridge a bit further along. Most of the network of subway under the station, which pre-dates the 80s-built footbridge by many years, has been out of use for some time – the official reason is probably security concerns, but actually it’s hard to see a good reason. I remember in my young day being intrigued while walking through the subway under Station Road and coming up by Thames Tower (a route that’s been closed for some years) to see a passageway mysteriously stretching off to the right, that I never went down – I think it must have been the passage that linked the railway station with the long-disused bus station, as I believe there is one, though I don’t remember ever using it. I’m sure I remember reading a while ago in one of the pages on the Reading Forum that there are supposed to be a whole network of subways below the level of the station and Station Road. Don’t know whether that’s true or not, but an intriguing thought. Anyway, apparently the aforementioned stretch leading from the Caversham side is to be “completely refurbished and re-lit”. How cute. I must remember to take a trip down it.


Some old photos of the station here. In case I don’t get another photo of the current footbridge before it’s demolished, here’s a picture of Ruth in it.

We had a visit from Dave, Hazel and Nia on Sunday morning, en route to a lunch date in Newbury and also, extremely thriftily, to collect some eBay-purchased sanitaryware from an address in Tilehurst. Nia ate some of my shortbread and got a bit of a stroke of Harley's head. In the afternoon we walked up to St Andrew's Hall on Albert Road for Caversham Artists' Christmas Gala, though we didn't spend long there - after the market the previous day I'd really had my fill of decorative glassware, watercolours etc. Caversham does seem to have a thriving community of artists, seemingly largely ladies - or, as I prefer to put it, Ladies Who Don't Have to Work.

Once back from the gala, we decorated one of my small Christmas trees, over a glass of sherry - a surprising whim but one I felt I should indulge.

Recently read Marie-Claire Carlyle’s How to Become a Money Magnet, in one of my sporadic forays into self-help books. An OK read; the usual combination of the odd helpful thought/tip nestled among layers of anodyne padding. I was most amused by Marie-Claire’s credentials as given in the ‘About the Author’ section at the beginning of the book: not only is she a DipLCH and FSSA, but is also an accredited Space Clearer. And she has taught cosmic ordering.

We had a card through the door a week or so ago from Thames Water headed ‘You may have a leak – call this number’, or something similarly potentially alarming. Ruth duly stayed in on Monday morning for visit from TW contractor, who confirmed that the leak is not on our property - good news, though the bad news is that as five houses apparently share the same external stopcock, we could be liable for the not inconsiderable leak which is likely to be at number 45, a tenanted property occupied (we think) by Latvians in possession of an extremely smelly gas barbecue. Apparently number 43 is having damp issues, though according to the TW man, the owner of number 45 is reluctant to engage with the problem, so not sure what's going to happen there. We've decided to keep quiet unless/until we're actually presented with a bill.

Have been occupying myself during the week in Milton Keynes by watching a number of the fascinating OU TV programmes that are available on DVD from the OU library. Last week an interesting programme on Queen Victoria’s early life; this week was the turn of ‘Women’s football’, part of the ‘Nation on film’ series. Partly about women’s football, partly focusing on early cinematography, the film focused on Dick, Kerr’s Eleven, a women’s football team comprised initially of factory workers from Preston who formed a team to play matches to raise money for injured WWI soldiers. By all accounts they were amazingly successful and really drew crowds – the record seems to have been a crowd of 53,000 at Goodison Park for a match on Boxing Day 1920, apparently much larger than anything the women’s game draws today. In 1921, women’s football teams were banned by the FA from using FA grounds, a ban which was not lifted until the 1970s and seems to have done considerable damage to the women’s game. The argument put forward in the documentary seems to be that the women were victims of their own success: the women’s game was rapidly expanding at the time, Dick Kerr’s team had raised £50,000 for charity (about 1.5 million in today’s money) at the time of the ban and regularly drew large crowds, drawing potential cost and support away from the FA and the men’s game. Whatever the reason, it does seem a bit mean.

Amazingly beautiful frost this morning - made myself late stopping to take pictures.