Hawksmoor walkabout

Saturday 17 February

Unreal City,
Under the brown fog of a winter dawn,
A crowd flowed over London Bridge, so many,
I had not thought death had undone so many.
Sighs, short and infrequent, were exhaled,
And each man fixed his eyes before his feet.
Flowed up the hill and down King William Street,
To where Saint Mary Woolnoth kept the hours
With a dead sound on the final stroke of nine.

From T. S. Eliot, The Waste Land:  Part I. The Burial of the Dead

The Waste Land. The keynote of a selection of T. S. Eliot poems that formed part of my A-level English Literature syllabus. As a sixth former, the literary references and constant foreign-language insertions helped to make the whole poem opaque to me – evidently our teacher had expected this, because my A-level text has annotations next to practically every line where she had had to explain to us what Eliot was believed to have been talking about. I’m aware that TWL is regarded as a significant poem and am quite prepared to believe it is, but it was certainly lost on me at the time. I’ve just re-read Part I in the course of locating the above quote, and enjoyed it rather more than I remember doing at 18. Perhaps having to study something always takes the life out of it a bit.

(For a long while now – quite possibly ever since my A-level – Mum has suggested that I read The Four Quartets, especially Little Gidding, as giving a more positive impression of Eliot. I’m ashamed to say that I don’t think I’ve read them yet.)

The reason for the quote from TWL was its reference to the church of St Mary Woolnoth. Various small snippets from TWL had stuck in my mind over the years, of which the name of this church was one, though I had never specifically sought it out before. Mum visited me in Reading a couple of weeks ago with a view to visiting some of the churches designed or contributed to by Nicholas Hawksmoor, an associate of Sir Christopher Wren who assisted with the concerted rebuild of churches that seems to have taken place after the Great Fire of London.

We took the Elizabeth Line from Reading to Liverpool Street, Mum armed with this useful map by Blue Crow media (pic nicked from their website). We ended up visiting six churches, the first five clustered reasonably close together in the City. Of the six, only two (St Mary Woolnoth and Christ Church Spitalfields) were fully designed by Hawksmoor; the others he contributed bits to, spires in the case of three and the top part of the tower in the case of one. There are a total of six churches wholly designed by Hawksmoor but visiting all of them would have meant travelling around a bit, and we decided to largely confine ourselves to several churches close together in the City of London, with a detour at the end at my request to view CCS. Unfortunately we had both overlooked to check in advance whether any of them were open on a Saturday, and none of them were – or perhaps Christ Church Spitalfields was, but we were tiring by then and didn’t bother to investigate. So we had to confine ourselves to viewing them from the outside - but had an interesting walkabout in the process.

St Michael, Cornhill

There was quite a large group of people assembling outside SMC – we couldn’t tell why, maybe waiting for a tour guide. I couldn’t photograph it properly without getting them in, hence this oddly-angled picture of the tower. Did snap this information board though. Apparently the upper parts of the tower were by Hawksmoor.

St Mary Woolnoth

Hawksmoor’s only City of London church out of the six wholly designed by him. St Mary Woolnoth is an unusual and severe-looking church, crammed onto a ridiculously tight plot at the junction of King William Street and Lombard Street. It was hard to tell whether at some point it had had a churchyard – it doesn’t appear to have one now. The little walkthrough behind it (Post Office Court) looks relatively modern so maybe the churchyard was sold off for building at some point. The church seems to have done well to still be standing – by all accounts it was threatened with demolition more than once and had Bank underground station constructed underneath it, losing its crypt in the process. Additionally, part of it seemed to be housing a Starbucks when we passed. Amazed it's maintained its dignity throughout all that.

St Mary Woolnoth

St Stephen Walbrook

The church of St Stephen Walbrook has a plaque on the side noting the founding of the Samaritans by its then-rector Chad Varah. Apparently the first Samaritans branch operated from a crypt beneath the church. Looking at the Wikipedia page, it doesn't actually mention any involvement of Hawksmoor in this church, but it appeared on Mum's leaflet so presumably there was something - a spire, I think.

Near to this church we found ourselves passing the Bloomberg building, and I mentioned the Mithraeum to Mum in passing. As it looked open, we decided to pop in - it was much more crowded than when Ruth and I had visited in January 2020 but we were able to catch the “immersive experience” where they dim the lights and play some recorded Latin chanting, such as the lads at the Temple of Mithras might have indulged in in the past.

St Stephen Walbrook

St Michael Paternoster Royal

After leaving that, we went down past Cannon Street station and along Upper Thames Street for a look at St Michael Paternoster Royal, where Dick Whittington is allegedly buried though no one now knows exactly where his grave was. Unlike the others, this church did have its door open, but we weren’t sure whether it’s still actually a church – there were some young people with musical instruments going inside. We poked our heads inside; the building seemed to be split into a church area in one half and what seemed to be some sort of meeting hall occupying the other.

St Michael Paternoster Royal

St James Garlickhythe

Hawksmoor designed the spire for this Wren church. I remember going to look at it briefly on a walkabout with Ray some years ago, probably amused by its name (see also St Andrew by the Wardrobe).

St James Garlickhythe

After St James G, we decided to seek lunch and after a bit of indecision found ourselves in Koya City, a Japanese noodle restaurant in the Bloomberg Arcade. I had fancied some Asian food but thought this looked full on passing it, but Mum spotted a table in the corner. Apparently Dad thinks she has a knack for e.g. finding a parking space in a car park that appears full. I had the Kamo Hiya-Atsu, duck in hot broth with cold udon. The duck soup was delicious; I wasn't so sure about the cold noodles. Mum had a frankly intimidatingly large tempura prawn: I think we had been expecting a selection of smaller prawns.

My lunch

Mum's massive tempura prawn

Christ Church, Spitalfields

After lunch I decided I wanted to go and see CCS, this being the only of Hawksmoor’s churches I could have visualized in advance. We retraced our steps back towards Liverpool Street and then veered off to the east, though ended up taking rather more of a meandering route than I think we needed to have done. On the way we passed this statue in Devonshire Square.

'The Knight of the Cnihtengild' by Denys Mitchell

We viewed the striking church from the side and the front before heading back to Liverpool Street.

CCS from the side

CCS from the front

Since our trip, I’ve learnt about Peter Ackroyd’s 1985 novel Hawksmoor, apparently about a series of murders committed in the Hawskmoor churches. Thinking this sounded a bit of a laugh I’ve just ordered a copy off AbeBooks for £2.95. Mum has been wading through Ackroyd’s London: The Biography for a little while now; I am hoping the novel proves somewhat lighter.

Walk with the Ramblers from Checkendon, 7.5 miles

Sunday 21 January

Another walk with the Mid Berks group, organized by Robert, whom I’d chatted to on the Lower Earley walk a couple of weeks earlier. There were only four of us on this walk – me, Robert, Alison, who’d also been on the Lower Earley walk, and a guy of about my age called Douglas, who works in financial services for Bloomberg and commutes to their City office a couple of times a week. (I did comment that I’d been in the basement of his building and what a lovely job Bloomberg have done with the Mithraeum. I might be remembering wrong but I’m sure he said something about having had to do a Mithraeum Quiz as part of his induction. That might have been a joke, I suppose.)

This walk started and finished in Checkendon, a village about eight miles north of Caversham and about a 15-minute drive. We met in a small car park by a recreation ground. To get there, I made use of what3words for the first time – it worked very well.

From the car park, we crossed the road and took a path across a field, stopping to look back at Checkendon Court. We then took country lanes towards Hammond’s Wood, turning left before we got to it and crossing over the A4074. Before we got to the road, Robert pointed out John Buckley’s ‘Nuba Survival’ sculpture in the distance over at Hammond’s Farm.

Shortly afterwards we had a bit of a conundrum as the footpath is signed through the grounds of a property called Massey’s Pightle, but there was also an enticing sign next to it informing us that there were dogs running loose. We decided to skip that and carried on up the lane, which joined the footpath a short way on, though when we looked back the way we’d come there was a sign sternly saying “Field Cottage Only”. Clearly the two properties are fighting it out as to who likes walkers less.

Looking back at Checkendon Court

We followed footpaths through Woodcote and then took a path leading through the grounds of the Oratory School – in fact the right of way leads right past the front of the main school building. After passing the school buildings, we walked towards a bank of trees running alongside the A4074 and down a set of deep steps down to the road, which we crossed (again) and went up a set of steps on the other side. I’d guess these steps aren’t all that well used – I’d never noticed them when driving past (you wouldn’t, really; also, it’s a dangerous stretch of road and you’d do well to have your eyes on it) but did locate them on Google Maps/Street View later. Here are the ones on the Oratory School side of the road:

From Exlade Street we followed the path through fields up to Corker’s Lane and then turned right and into woodland, where we stopped and sat on a fallen tree trunk to eat lunch.

Field near Exlade Street

Woods

After lunch we carried on through the woods to Busgrove Lane, and then walked uphill through woodland towards Wyfold Court. Our route didn’t pass close by the house, though we did pause to get a glimpse through the trees of its turrety exuberance.

Wyfold Court just about visible through trees

Here’s a much closer-up picture that I took on a walk with Ray back in 2014.

We completed the walk via Basset Wood and Ipsden Wood back to Checkendon.

Route of the walk:

Walk with the Ramblers around Lower Earley and Earley, 4.4 miles

Sunday 7 January

I think I joined the Ramblers towards the end of the lockdown era, probably fired up with some desire to do some regular group activities, as well as discovering some new footpaths I wouldn’t have discovered by myself. However, although I’ve been enjoying receiving the quarterly magazine, with its invaluable sock rash tips, as at the start of 2024 I’d only actually been out on two walks, a pleasant ‘Caversham Byways’ walk with the Pang Valley group, in January 2022, and then another walk in September 2022 with the ‘Berkshire Weekend Walkers’, a rather faster-paced 10-mile country route from Kintbury via Inkpen (written up by the walk leader here as walk 537). But that’s managed to be it.

Copies of 'Walk', the Ramblers' quarterly magazine

The organization now seems to be known just as the ‘Ramblers’. Perhaps they felt the ‘Association’ bit was offputting for today’s younger folk - not that I have so far been on a Ramblers walk that included anyone much under about 45. I note in fairness that among the Berkshire groups there is one specifically for people in their 20s and 30s, which is probably a good idea in terms of attracting younger people - I don't suppose in my twenties I'd have wanted to go walking with a bunch of elderlies, much as you do meet some very interesting older people in the Ramblers.

Anyway, in a fit of New Year re-evaluating life/banging head against table etc, I decided I would try and make more use of my membership and actually get out for more group walks. The walk I chose was a gentle start, billed as ‘Leisurely’ and a modest length of only four and a half miles. This was a walk around Earley and Lower Earley, with the Mid Berks group. Lower Earley is an enormous housing development on the SE edge of Reading, apparently reckoned to be the largest private housing development in the UK at the time it was developed in the 80s/90s. (Indeed, this Wikimapia page reckons it was the biggest in western Europe, but it's hard to verify these sorts of stats.) I lived there for a year in the early 1990s in a rented house share with my sister Hannah. Here I am in the doorway of the house we rented (I appear to be wearing just a shirt and tights, but I suspect I had a short skirt on – ah, far off youth). It was quite a nice house and a pleasant enough area.

Me outside our rented house in Beighton Close, Lower Earley

For this walk we met in a car park by Chalfont Park in Lower Earley, near the Asda complex. I turned up early – having chosen to get the bus and therefore been limited to its timings – and a youngish (40s) chap also waiting in the car park eventually sidled up to me and we established that we were both there for the walk. Eventually around 10-12 people turned up for the walk, led by a spry 70-something lady called Jean, who has lived in the Earley area around 50 years and therefore seen the whole Lower Earley development be built up. She was able to tell us lots of interesting stuff including niche stuff such as which footpaths used to be through roads, which is exactly the sort of info I like.

We started off by walking past Asda and out onto Elm Lane, one of several former roads that are now no longer through routes for cars. Then crossed Rushey Way and proceeded partly along paths and partly along quiet estate roads to the Laurel Park recreation ground, which we walked along the edge of and then into the Maiden Erlegh Nature Reserve, which includes a lake. I assume that this nature reserve was originally part of the grounds of Maiden Erlegh House.

Maiden Erlegh Lake

After the lake we turned back towards Lower Earley, taking in Radstock Lane, another former road now partly footpath. Towards the end of the walk we did a circuit of Redhatch Copse and walked through the newish housing that’s been built on the site of the former Sibly Hall, one of Reading University’s halls of residence and somewhere I lived for a term while I was studying there in the 1990s (being on some sort of quest for the first half of that decade of pointlessly moving house as often as possible). Sibly was a somewhat bleak building that rose like some sort of beacon among the sea of housing that surrounded it. It was demolished around ten years ago and the company responsible posted a video on YouTube of the demolition - somewhat tastelessly to my mind, but I guess they need to advertise their services.

Another view of the lake

Definitely felt afterwards as though I'd taken part in some constructive activity/mixing, so we'll see if this continues. 

Route of the walk:

More books read recently

'A Favourite of the Gods' by Sybille Bedford

I had never heard of Sybille Bedford until Ruth picked up a biography of her a while back (Selina Hastings' An Appetite for Life) after reading a review of it. At around the same time, Mum’s book group read this novel as one of their book choices. Ruth recommends the biography, but as it doesn’t make much sense to me to read a biography of a writer without having read any of their books, I thought I would read this first. I seem to have written far too long and rambling a review of this moderately dull novel, but I can’t be bothered to edit any further so here it is.

The novel opens in the late 1920s. 15-year-old Flavia and her mother Constanza are on a train, travelling from Italy to Brussels. They have just crossed into France, where they are planning to change at Nice to pick up the express train, when Constanza discovers she has lost a ruby ring she was wearing. Seemingly most of the train’s staff get involved in looking for the ring, while Flavia and Constanza miss their stop at Nice (because Constanza refuses to get off the train without her ring) and carry on through various stops along the French coast. They eventually get off at a small unnamed coastal town where they book in to the local hotel. At Brussels, Constanza was to meet up with Lewis, the man she was due to marry, while Flavia was to carry on to England for educational purposes. However, the Prologue ends with Flavia noting that they stayed where they were for eleven years.

Part I is set in Rome and looks back over Flavia’s American grandmother Anna’s marriage to her father, a prince. It details, somewhat tediously, Anna’s wealth, beauty and abilities to charm anyone she comes across, and also relates how beautiful, spirited and clever her daughter Constanza was. Part I ends with Anna, having finally been told of her husband’s 20-year-long affair of which everyone else in Rome already knew, seeking legal advice and leaving Rome for London. She leaves her younger child Giorgio with his father, but takes Constanza with her, additionally setting up some legal thing that prevents Constanza’s father Rico from having any access to his daughter. Constanza has to say goodbye to her father, who has been a decent enough man to risk losing his daughter rather than use her as a bargaining chip. We feel sorry for Rico – at least, I did.

Part II is set in London, where Anna and Constanza have now settled. Constanza throws herself into London social life and has a good time. (We later learn that even Rico’s daughter knew about the affair of which her mother was oblivious.) In due course Constanza meets a young Englishman, Simon Herbert, who has lived in Rome and is acquainted with her father. World War I breaks out. After the end of the war, Simon asks Constanza for a divorce in order to marry his lover (Constanza has been taking lovers for a while now, but doesn’t seem about to request a divorce on the strength of that. Perhaps that was being Italian for you).

In Part III, Constanza flits about Europe. Anna continues taking a different house according to the season, before eventually settling back in Italy after the war ends. The story ends by joining up with the Prologue, with Constanza and Flavia living at the (possibly fictional) French fishing port of St-Jean-le-Sauveur. This section is pleasantly atmospheric, with talk of villas, sardines, red wine – and ends with Constanza meeting yet another new beau. (I admired Constanza’s distaste for being anyone’s wife, and unwillingness to be tied down – desires that, presumably, wealth would have made it much easier to indulge.)

I reasonably liked the book – in the sense that it’s well written, nothing wrong with it, etc – but it stops only just short of being quite boring. Bedford litters the novel with a number of Italian (and occasionally French) words that necessitated a pause while I asked Google to translate them. And even a few English words – while I consider myself to have a good vocabulary, I was stumped on “persiflage”.

I assume the title of the book refers to Constanza, the more-or-less heroine, though Constanza’s mother Anna also plays a significant part in the novel. Anna is the most atrocious person – she manipulates those around her by sulking, taking to her bed and refusing to eat whenever she is annoyed at something. She spitefully burns a letter from Rico seeking a brief audience with Constanza in London, threatening a court injunction to prevent him having access to his daughter, leaving Constanza to draw the conclusion that her father simply does not want to see her. After her death in the later stages of the novel, she delivers a coup de grâce by having hand-delivered to Constanza an envelope containing what turns out to be a revised version of her will leaving all of her considerable estate to Constanza’s feckless brother Giorgio as a last act of spite. I liked Constanza on the whole, though I wanted to shake her for some of her decision-making – she irritatingly agrees to be the Guilty Party in the divorce in order to save Simon’s fledgling parliamentary career when it is Simon who has requested the divorce and loses custody of Flavia to her mother as a result, and, more horrifically, when presented with Anna’s revised will after Anna’s death, considers that it is legal and she must abide by her mother’s wishes, even though it would have left her more or less destitute. Luckily, only Constanza and Flavia know about the revised will and, sensing her mother’s indecision, Flavia burns it and tells her mother it blew off the veranda into the sea. Thank God for Flavia.

A Favourite of the Gods was published in 1963. Sybille Bedford was born in 1911 in Germany, to wealthy parents, but seems to have lived most of her life elsewhere. This Spectator review of Hastings' biography calls it a soundtrack “to one version of the 20th century”, a reference to Bedford's privileged background and lifestyle. This novel’s moneyed heroines, who take houses and flats in whichever European city takes their fancy with no concern for the cost, seem to fit with that.

'Remarkable Creatures' by Tracy Chevalier

Enjoyable story based on the real-life fossil-hunting activities of Mary Anning in and around Lyme Regis in the first half of the nineteenth century. Chevalier outlines in a postscript which bits of the story are based on fact and where artistic licence was taken. The story focuses on the friendship between Anning and fellow fossil-hunter Elizabeth Philpot and is told from their alternating perspectives.

Elizabeth Philpot is one of three unmarried sisters living together in a cottage in Lyme Regis, funded by an allowance from their married brother John, a solicitor. The sisters have been obliged to leave London to live somewhere that will enable a reasonable standard of living; John is evidently under obligation to provide an annual allowance for them but this would not have stretched far in the capital. The younger Mary Anning is a working-class girl, the daughter of a cabinet-maker who dies prematurely leaving the family in poverty. Philpot first meets her outside Mary’s father’s workshop, tending a table of fossils to be sold as curiosities (“curies”). Despite their age and class difference, the two strike up a friendship based on their shared interest in fossils. Elizabeth focuses on collecting fossils of fish, to add to her personal collection; Mary, unable to indulge in such hobbies as collecting, looks for anything she might be able to sell to improve her family’s finances.

One day Mary finds what seems to be the skull of a much larger creature, an icthyosaurus (though Mary initially terms it a crocodile, and later an “ichie”), which attracts the attention of people beyond Lyme Regis. Much of the rest of the story focuses on Elizabeth’s attempts to ensure Mary gets fairly paid for her finds, which are by now enhancing others’ collections, and to get Mary recognition from the men-only world of fossil collecting and the scientific study of fossils; this culminates in Elizabeth stoutly travelling alone to London and trying to gain entry to a Geological Society meeting (women aren’t allowed in) in order to defend Mary against an accusation that she has faked a plesiosaurus skeleton by sticking together bits of two separate creatures.

It hadn't occurred to me that the question of what fossils represented might have raised thorny and controversial issues vis à vis Christian belief: if fossils were the bodies of creatures that no longer existed, did that mean that God could think better of some of his creations and allow them to die out? Her faith a bit shaken, Elizabeth consults the local vicar, who won’t have any truck with such notions and advises her that God placed the fossils in the rocks when he made them, in order to test people’s faith. Elizabeth leaves unconvinced, but with her faith in the vicar a bit shaken.

'The Rake's Mistress' by Nicola Cornick

A Mills & Boon Historical romance.

It’s 1803. Rebecca Raleigh is a glass engraver, living alone above her workshop in Clerkenwell. Rebecca learned her trade from her uncle, who ran the workshop and died a few months before the story opens. Since her uncle’s death, the business has lost custom and Rebecca has fallen on increasingly hard times. Her friend Nan gets her a lifeline in the form of a lucrative engraving commission from the Archangel Club, an exclusive London club for gentlemen of “exotic tastes”. After a meeting at the Archangel to discuss the commission, Rebecca is being driven home in one of the club’s coaches when she runs across Lord Stephen Kestrel, an upper-crust young man who has been the victim of a prank that has resulted in him being stranded in the street in a state of partial undress. Through this encounter with Stephen, Rebecca meets Stephen’s older brother Lucas, who initially wrongly assumes Rebecca to be a courtesan who has seduced his brother, leading to their having a fiery exchange within the carriage. Turning up at Rebecca’s workshop the next day to return the cloak she’d lent Stephen to cover himself, Lucas ends up placing an order for some engraved glass as a wedding present for another of his brothers. Lucas and Rebecca are increasingly overtaken by strong feelings for each other and, after rescuing Rebecca from a masked ball at which she has rejected the advances of the unpleasant Lord Fremantle, they spend a passionate night together.

However, although Lucas’ attraction to Rebecca is real enough, he has an additional motivation in pursuing an acquaintance with her. He and his brothers, led by their oldest brother Justin, Duke of Kestrel (yes, I know) are engaged in trying to crack a spy ring operating from the Suffolk ‘Midwinter’ villages, where the Kestrels’ home is. The spy ring communicates via a pictorial code and the code’s cipher is engraved on glass. Lucas has been doing the rounds of London’s glass engravers to try to identify the style of engraving that will match the examples of the code that the Kestrels have in their possession. In Rebecca’s workshop, he spots what he is pretty sure is the style of engraving they are looking for, on some pieces engraved by Rebecca’s late uncle George Provost. The Kestrels need to trace the identity of the person who placed those orders with the studio. Feeling guilty, and under pressure from the Duke to get more use out of Rebecca as she seems to be their only possible link to the spy ring, Lucas fesses up to Rebecca regarding his underlying motive to gain information from her. Rebecca is angry and lobs a good many fiery words at him. Lucas also declares that he wishes to marry her, and Rebecca tells him not to be so ridiculous. Lucas takes her by force to the Kestrels’ townhouse in Mayfair for a discussion with the Duke and the Kestrels’ friends Lord and Lady Newlyn. The outcome of these discussions is that Rebecca agrees to accompany the party to Suffolk, posing as a cousin of the Duke.

Lucas is convinced that Rebecca is telling the truth about her ignorance of anything to do with the spy ring, but senses that she is holding back information about her family background. Rebecca becomes agitated when questioned by Lucas about her brother Daniel, disclosing that Daniel is at sea but allowing Lucas to think that he is in the Navy when Lucas suspects this not to be the case. Additionally, both Lucas and Justin spot that Rebecca’s manner and level of assurance while in the Kestrels’ London home is not consistent with her being from a working background. In due course the Kestrel brothers find out that Rebecca’s family name is De Lancey, that her father was English gentry who married a French Huguenot girl and assumed her name as a way of sticking two fingers to his Parliamentarian father and that Rebecca's brother Daniel is a privateer and possible French spy. Lucas reacts badly to this and challenges Rebecca angrily, and they have another falling out.

The following day, while out in a nearby harbour town, Rebecca gets herself abducted by local gent Sir John Horton who is evidently aware of her true identity. Turns out John, plus local couple Lord and Lady Benedict, are the actual spies. They set sail in a yacht with Rebecca locked downstairs, but there’s heavy mist and the yacht runs aground. In a splendidly ridiculous sequence, Rebecca unscrews the glass of one of the portholes with her engraving scribe, climbs out, jumps into the water just as the yacht capsizes, and swims for it; as luck would have it, she is rescued by her brother’s ship which appears out of the mist in the nick of time and throws down a rope for her to climb up, which she manages to do despite presumably being weighed down by long skirts. Onboard, Daniel – who doesn’t spy for the French, he’s just an excitingly free-spirited outlaw – persuades Rebecca that Lucas is known to be an OK chap and that marrying him would probably be a good idea given that she’s poor and alone and all, and he (Daniel) is away at sea. On Rebecca's arrival back at Kestrel Court, Lucas declares his love for her and proposes again, and this time Rebecca agrees.

I enjoy the occasional romance novel and this isn’t a bad one. Lucas is a pretty attractive hero and the epilogue, in which Cornick additionally provides the austere Duke with a bit of romance, is a nice touch. TRM was apparently the third book in the ‘Bluestocking Brides’ series, the earlier two being The Notorious Lord (about Cory Newlyn) and One Night of Scandal (about the second Kestrel brother, Richard). (We learn on page thirteen of The Rake’s Mistress that Stephen Kestrel has two sisters in addition to his three brothers, but the sisters do not appear in the novel at any point. Maybe they do in the others. Or maybe I shouldn’t be too exacting towards a M&B). A close friend of mine may have just ordered both from the Amazon Marketplace. Well, these winter evenings are long and dark.

Urban footpaths walk with Ray, 7 miles

Sunday 3 September

Back in September, but just sorting through some photos.

This was a walk around Green Park followed by walking back into Reading via the Coley water meadows. Much of this was on footpaths I’d never been on before, not all very attractive - but always interesting to discover new paths.

Following my earlier train ride to the new Green Park station back in July, Ray fancied a ride out to it too, so we took the train there from Reading. We started with a breakfast sandwich at the Triple Two café – the café’s in a nice setting but the service and presentation were distinctly limp. Our sausage sandwiches were well filled but in some remarkably dry sourdough bread that needed some application to get through.

After the café we crossed Longwater Avenue and joined the path straight opposite. We turned off past the Thales UK building and walked down the west side of the central ‘Longwater’ lake, coming out further down Longwater Avenue. We paused by the somewhat pointless-seeming mini-roundabout in the SW corner of the business park, near where Kybes Lane/Kirtons Farm Road crosses the M4. A lane leads off the roundabout, under the road bridge and into what looks from Google Maps to be an area of undeveloped land. I have a feeling that the original plan for Green Park was never fully realized – perhaps it was originally supposed to extend into this area? No idea what the plan is for this land now.

The pointless roundabout

Lane leading under bridge to undeveloped area

It's the land in this 2009 photo published by a Geograph contributor. I'm not sure it's much further on now in terms of development.

We continued along Longwater Avenue and then along South Oak way, past the Green Park Mast. Further on we were briefly diverted by the massive queue of cars waiting to get into Costco. Just before Costco, we turned left onto a secluded path leading alongside a small waterway (or possibly just a ditch) and round the back of the Lime Square development. We crossed Brook Drive and the Foudry Brook and made our way back out to Longwater Avenue.

The secluded path

The end of the path

The Foudry Brook rises in north Hampshire and joins the river Kennet at Whitley, in an unglamorous spot between the A33 and a retail park. This poor little stream evidently suffers from poor water quality due to receiving treated effluent from several sewage works along its route. The ever-charming Thames Water were "criticised" earlier this year for pumping sewage into the brook. A few harsher penalties wouldn't go amiss.

We left Green Park via Smallmead Road, coming out on the bend where Kybes Lane becomes Kirton's Farm Road. There's a derelict house on this corner - some research involving the invaluable Geograph suggests that it's Smallmead Cottages.

The derelict house(s)

Street View image of the other side

Since this 2013 Geograph picture, the tree/plant growth has been cleared and the door and ground floor windows have been boarded up. Wonder what its future is - and when it was last occupied.

After looking at the cottages we crossed the bridge over the railway line and a bit further on turned right off the road onto Cottage Lane, which leads north past fishing lakes to the River Kennet. It's a surfaced road for the first stretch, becoming a footpath further on.

Cottage Lane

After it becomes a footpath

The path eventually joined the Kennet towpath near Southcote Lock. We turned right and headed in the Reading direction, past Fobney Island, which has the River Kennet flowing to its south and a canalised stretch to the north, as per the pic.

Following the canal towpath towards Fobney Lock

At Fobney Lock we crossed the bridge that leads past the old pumping station and then turned left onto a wet footpath with a high fence on both sides - this cuts through the Fobney Water Treatment Works. This path isn't too pleasant and was flooded at one point - Ray managed to construct us a makeshift crossing by kicking a handy fence panel, plank or similar (I've forgotten) into position. It was a relief to come out onto meadow.

The path by the water treatment works

Crossing the water meadows

We followed a path across Fobney Meadow and the Coley water meadows that leads to a band of trees that excitingly conceals a stretch of disused railway line, complete with old bridge. This was the Coley branch line.

Bridge that carried the Coley branch line

Looking towards Coley Park

We continued following the path across meadow until it reaches the Holy Brook on the southern edge of Coley Park. I had had enough of meadows and little-used footpaths by this point and would happily have walked back into Reading along roads via Coley Park, but Ray wanted to follow a footpath leading towards Reading along the Holy Brook. I think he fairly swiftly regretted this decision - after a pleasant initial bit it became extremely overgrown with stinging nettles and he was wearing shorts. The footpath (such as it is) reaches an abrupt end at the Reading Link Retail Park and gets re-routed, kind of, around the end of the retail park and then up onto the main road.

Pretty gardens by the Holy Brook, before the overgrown bit

The overgrown bit

Walking around the end of the retail park

We had a brief bit of walking along the A33 before cutting back down off the road, past the 'Holy Brook Nook' and through the subway to come out by the Kennet, where we turned left into town.

Brief bit of A33 walk

Passing County Lock near the town centre

Our route below: