Walk via Marsh Benham and Stockcross, 4.3 miles

Sunday 2 May

I drove over to Kintbury and parked at the car park near the lock, and Ray drove us back over towards Newbury for this walk. He parked on a piece of wide verge by the B4000, just off the roundabout with the A4 and the slip road onto the northbound A34 Newbury Bypass.

We walked up the B-road a short way before turning left to follow a footpath across a field to come out by the A4. We then had to walk westwards along the road for a bit, before crossing the road and going through a cute little gate set into the wall of Benham Park, marked as a public footpath.

The gates of Benham Park

The little gate in the wall

The current house at Benham Park was built in the 1770s for the 6th Baron Craven, designed by the architect Henry Holland, the business partner and son-in-law of Capability Brown. The Wikipedia page currently has a picture of the house dated 1904, which shows the additional wing on the left that was later demolished during substantial alternations in 1914. It was the family home of the Sutton family from the late nineteenth century up until the early 1980s, when they sold it and it was converted into offices by the Norwegian IT company Norsk Data. 

It seems to have remained offices until about ten years ago. It went on the market in 2017 for 26 million, at which point it had permissions either to be returned to use as a private country house or to be turned into a wellness centre. I don’t know who bought it or what it’s currently being used for. We got the impression there might be some works going on there, but we couldn’t get close enough to the house to see much.

The public footpath through trees

The public footpath leads through trees along the northern edge of the park, then crosses open parkland to join the road that runs through the middle of the estate. Here you can see what was at one point the route leading from the West Lodge at the far northwestern tip of the estate – I seem to remember it being rumoured locally that the splendid gate piers at this entrance were haunted by a ghostly horseman (possibly plus carriage). It just looks like a grassy path over a field now, but the route is clearly visible on Google Maps.

We turned right and bore round past houses to exit the park at another set of gates near Benham Park Stud. We walked along the minor road here past The Red House, which looked to be doing good business in its garden. After a short way we turned right onto a footpath leading over a field, past some major chicken operations. This came out on a minor road near some farm buildings.

Gates

Buildings at Benham Park Stud

Chickens

We crossed the A4 and walked north up Nalderhill Road. We turned right onto a footpath leading through a rape field and then into woodland, where we followed the path and then a minor road back to the B4000. We turned right and followed the road through Stockcross back to the car.

Walking back through Stockcross

Our route below, with the start and end point on the right.

North Norfolk: Will We Get There?

Ruth and I are due – fingers crossed – to be Actually Going on Holiday next Monday. (Or on a ‘staycation’, given that that word seems to have been recently redefined to encompass holidaying within the UK, by people who think it’s not a proper holiday unless you fly somewhere and roast yourself on a beach for two weeks).

We had booked a week in north Norfolk for May 2020, following an enjoyable stay in the area in May 2019 (of which more below), but the first COVID lockdown meant that we couldn’t go, so we rebooked for May 2021. At the start of 2021 we were both somewhat gloomy about whether we’d even be able to go this year, but thankfully the dates announced in the government’s ‘roadmap’ have allowed self-catering breaks with members of your own household from 12 April. We’ll just miss the next roadmap date of 17 May when we would have actually been able to eat INSIDE a pub or restaurant, but we’re so pleased to be going at all that that’s frankly a small price to pay. And it’ll no doubt mean the trip works out cheaper.

We had an encouraging email from the company we’ve booked with and are just waiting for that arrival information sometime this week.

I won’t say anything more about the upcoming booking in case I jinx it, but will say a few words about the May 2019 holiday as I don’t seem to have published the post I drafted at the time.

Where we stayed

The Triumphal Arch

We were looking for somewhere within reach of the coast near Holkham, as Ruth had sung the praises of the beach there, plus my parents had been to Wells-next-the-Sea a few times and liked the area. While searching for places to stay in the area, I came across the Holkham Lodges, four little holiday lets, all only sleeping two. The Triumphal Arch, where we stayed, is just outside the southern boundary of the estate, placed towards the southern end of the long straight avenue that runs through the estate. The other four are converted estate lodges. The rentals are arranged through SALT Norfolk.

The arch is adorable and undoubtedly the most quirky place I’ve stayed in. The ground floor has a little kitchen and dining table; there’s then a narrow stone spiral staircase leading to the upper floor, which houses the living area, bedroom plus a bath all in one space. Off the staircase midway are a toilet on one side and a shower area on the other. You would only want to be holidaying there with a partner, as the side of the shower area is a large full-length window overlooking the kitchen below. The holiday accommodation comprises the right-hand side of the lower portion in the picture above, plus the whole of the top floor. We arrived to a charming selection of welcome gifts, including a fairly intimidating artisanal loaf of bread that took an inordinate amount of effort to slice.

Welcome gifts

View from the upper room

Looking down the staircase from the upper room

Despite its inconvenience we both loved it and decided that we would stay there again, albeit it’s possibly better for a short break (we only booked three nights on this occasion) than a full week as the quirky charm of the steep spiral staircase and cramped bathroom conditions could start to pall a bit. The arch is in beautifully peaceful surroundings.

The journey there

The mini-break didn’t start all that well as when I went out to pack the car I discovered that both my car’s wing mirrors had been stolen overnight. While I steamed and vented for a while, Ruth sensibly phoned Motor Serv and sourced me some more, which we duly collected, and I phoned the Wolverton FastFit Station to see if they could do a quick bit of fitting. To cut a longish story short, they did, and after a restorative portion of churros at Café Olé we eventually set off, though we had to cancel the lunch with Ruth’s parents that had been planned for that day as we were running too late by that stage. We did stop at Oxburgh Hall to make use of our NT cards, and had a brief look around and a cream tea.

Oxburgh Hall

First full day

On the first of our two full days there, I went out for a pre-breakfast walk and was charmed to see a hare coming up the road towards me. Never seen one close up before. (S)he stopped when (s)he must have sensed me, but didn’t immediately run the other way. I hadn’t realized how different they look from rabbits – much bigger, with darker fur and striking eyes.

Once breakfasted, we drove to the car park on Lady Anne’s Drive and walked past the funky little ‘Lookout’ to Holkham Beach. Beautiful – huge expanse of sand.

The Lookout

The beach at Holkham

After spending some time walking around there we decided to walk to Wells-next-the-Sea, which takes you along the Peddars Way and Norfolk Coast Path through a woodland area to the Wells Beach Car Park, and then down Beach Road into the town. We passed a caravan park while walking along Beach Road, which Ruth thought might have been where she once stayed with a friend’s family as a teenager. We had a brief look around Wells and a cup of tea, and then walked back.

Walking to Wells

We had decided we wanted to have dinner at The Victoria Inn in Holkham, I think because we’d seen it reviewed in The Times’ Weekend supplement a while back. Because I wanted to have a drink with dinner, we were obliged to do the walk of around three miles across the park (our stay at Holkham Lodges entitled us to walk around the estate, which was a nice perk). It was a very pleasant walk, but as we’d done quite a bit of walking during the day I seem to remember it feeling like a bit of a trek.

Evening walk across the Holkham estate

I'm sure we had a nice meal but I can't actually remember what I ate. I do remember that some of the meal was taken up with Ruth trying to organise us a taxi back to our rental property. She did manage it, and it duly turned up and drove us home, probably at some expense but neither of us could face the walk back.

Second full day

The first part of our second day was taken up with visiting Walsingham, which I wanted to do for unclear but no doubt deeply spiritual reasons. I seem to remember the Catholic comprehensive in Nottingham I attended for a couple of years organizing trips to Walsingham, but I never went on one, not finding the thought very appealing at 13. In middle age, these places can seem more interesting.

We parked in the public car park in the village and had a wander around. There are two shrines at Walsingham (as well as various other churches and chapels): one Anglican, one Catholic. The Anglican shrine (the Shrine of our Lady of Walsingham) is in the village itself; the Catholic shrine (the Slipper Chapel) is about a mile away at Houghton St Giles but you can walk to it, as we did, along the Pilgrim Way, part of the route of the former Wells and Fakenham Railway. The two shrines form an unexpected contrast to each other as the Anglican shrine is very ornate and ‘high church’ (photo below of one of its chapels) while the Slipper Chapel is an unassuming building with a plain and simple interior.

Chapel at the Anglican shrine

Me near a cross

We had a drink at The Bull, but it wasn’t serving food so we ended up returning to the Anglican shrine and having lunch in the café there. After lunch we walked the mile or so along the Pilgrim Way to the Catholic shrine and had a look at the Chapel and a browse around the shop. We ended up having to cut our time there a bit short as we were running out of time on the car park ticket - I may go back sometime.

Drink outside at The Bull

Setting out along the Pilgrim Way

The Slipper Chapel

The reason Walsingham is awash with shrines to the Virgin Mary is that she allegedly appeared nearby to one Richeldis de Faverches, in 1061. The British Pilgrimage Trust lists various possible Pilgrim Ways to Walsingham; you can download the routes in GPX format for your smartphone. There’s moving with the times.

Before leaving Walsingham we paid a quick visit to the ruins of Walsingham Abbey.

Later that day we visited the grounds of the Holkham estate and had a meander around the huge walled garden.

The walled garden

The journey back

The following day we packed up and visited Holt for an hour or so, before driving south to visit Ruth's parents for the postponed lunch. As we got further into inland Norfolk Ruth became gloomy and started muttering about sugar beet country. We were both agreed that we really like the north Norfolk coast, though, and are hoping to return.

Day out on the K&A

Saturday 24 April

First trip on Ray’s boat for a while. Also first train journey for a while.

Ruth and I caught an early(ish) train from Reading to Bedwyn, the idea being that Ray and his boat would meet us there and travel back to his mooring at Kintbury. He had been moored at Froxfield for the previous week where a friend had been helping him fit solar panels to the roof of the boat. In the event, there was no sign of Ray when we got off the train and made our way to the towpath at Great Bedwyn, so we started walking and met him at Burnt Mill Lock just outside the village. Apparently his friend’s estimate of the time it would take him to get to Great Bedwyn from Froxfield had been a bit out, and it had actually taken the best part of two hours. Think it slows things down quite a lot if you have to do all the locks yourself. As the canal was quiet we had a cup of tea in situ within the lock, chugged on to Bedwyn Wharf to turn around and then set off.

Coming back through Burnt Mill Lock

Heading northeast towards Little Bedwyn

It was quite a breezy day, which caused Ray some problems early on when turning the boat at the winding hole at Bedwyn, and again just before Little Bedwyn Lock, when the boat got a bit wedged and he and Ruth had to push/pull it from either side.

Tussling with the boat by Little Bedwyn Lock

We passed through nine locks between Great Bedwyn and Hungerford (Burnt Mill, Potter’s, Little Bedwyn, Oakhill Down, Froxfield Middle, Froxfield Bottom, Picketfield, Cobbler’s and Hungerford Marsh). Most 7 or 8 feet or so in depth. Hungerford Marsh Lock has a swing bridge directly over it (apparently making it unique on the canal) which has to be opened before operating the lock. For the first part of the trip, Ruth helped out with the lock gates while I idled around, but then I decided I really should get involved so did my share of gate-pushing and windlass-turning for the last few locks. Some big variation in the stiffness of the gates – it must do wonders for your core if you’re pushing them regularly.

In Oakhill Down Lock

The swing bridge at Hungerford Marsh Lock

At Cobbler’s Lock, just west of Hungerford on the other side of Freeman’s Marsh, there’s a cottage – presumably the former lock cottage – that Ray had heard had recently sold at auction for around £300,000, despite being structurally unsound (it’s visibly buttressed at the front) and apparently having no road access. Sounds like a labour of love, and money, for someone. The lock was one of a couple we went through that had a sign on it saying it was to be left empty – this Geograph contributor reckons it’s because the cottage’s cellar floods when the lock’s full.

The cottage at Cobbler's Lock

We realized early on in the voyage that we weren’t going to make it as far as Kintbury without making it into a route march (route chug?) into the evening, so Ray moderated his ambitions and aimed for Hungerford. We stopped just above Froxfield for a nice lunch and then carried on, reaching Hungerford about 5:30pm. Ray moored up near the church and decided he was going to spend the night there; Ruth and I walked to the station to get a train back to Reading.

Approaching Hungerford

Virtual amusements

Team quizzes

There have been quite a few of these, organized by public-spirited people; I’ve attended a few though until recently hadn't done very well at any of them. The first one I attended had an inventive ‘Name the yoga pose’ round, which I certainly couldn’t do. At another one, there was a question about which chemical element was denoted with the symbol B, and I was amazed to have ‘Boron’ pop into my head – must have been a faint memory from long ago school chemistry classes, as I’m sure I’ve never heard or thought much about boron since then. As it turned out, though most of us on the Teams call had heard the letter as ‘B’, the questioner had actually been saying ‘V’. There was of course a smart-arse who piped up knowingly with ‘Vanadium’.

However, this all changed at the most recent Friday quiz, when I actually managed to win, albeit narrowly. I credit this to a) luck; b) the amount of time Ruth and I have spent playing Scrabble during the lockdowns, as prior to this I would not have known that K is the only Scrabble letter to carry the value 5; c) on the ‘countries and their capitals’ round, the time Dave and I spent poring over Dad’s atlas as kids (though as it was before the fall of the Iron Curtain, don’t ask me the capital of e.g. Croatia, Slovenia or Georgia, as I won’t know). I also, thanks to a recent Sunday supplement article, did recognize Lady Gaga’s real name. And I got all five questions in the sports round right, amazingly, mainly through lucky guesses (thought processes along the lines of: Australia are quite good at cricket, aren't they, and let's try Pelé for that South American-sounding footballer's name).

Susan and I tied for top place and had to be asked tie-break questions – I lucked out with ‘What was the name of Han Solo’s ship in Star Wars?’ while Susan was landed with ‘What was Harry Potter’s birthday?’, which we both thought was a lot more difficult (though it’s possible someone under 25 might have thought the opposite). A prize of some beer is supposedly wending its way to me.

I didn’t, incidentally, know the answer to this. It’s apparently what Elon Musk and partner named their child born last year.

Musk’s partner evidently later tweeted an explanation for the name, though I can’t say it helps much. Also, there’s no guide to how it’s pronounced.

Scrabble

I’ve contrived to remain almost entirely ignorant of online gaming, but was dimly aware that people do play more traditional ‘board’ games like Scrabble and chess online, so thought it might be fun to have a go. After some brief online research I picked the Scrabble GO app. Ruth and I have subsequently had a number of enjoyable Zoom sessions on weekends when I’ve stayed at my MK flat. You can see each other’s moves via the app though if you want to talk to each other you need to be additionally logged in to a video call of some sort.

Advantages of the app: it does the adding up for you, and it’s all nicely neat and tidy – being of an anally retentive bent, much of my time during Scrabble games is spent tidying up the letters so that they’re neatly placed on their squares after some reckless pervert has jogged the board and/or placed their letters sloppily and JUST LEFT THEM.

Disadvantages of the app: we might be showing our ages here, but it’s obscenely over-busy and colourful. It’s nice to get a bit of tootling fanfare when you make a high-scoring word, but it goes too far and keeps exploding in coloured stars and inviting you to e.g. collect 500 awesomeness points – much of our time is spent furiously jabbing at our phones’ screens trying to get away from animated treasure chests and back to the damn board. It also keeps inviting you to play complete strangers – I’m sure I’ve inadvertently started games with several, which I’ve then had to work out how to withdraw from.

We are pretty evenly matched and have been enjoying our games so much we actually bought an actual Scrabble set in WHSmith, which we’ve been using on weekends we’re both at the house.

Virtual wine-tasting

Our head of unit, who is Spanish, has run a couple of virtual wine-tasting evenings during the lockdown. I missed the first one, which apparently involved blindfolds, but thought I’d turn up to the second as it was on the Friday evening of a weekend I was alone at my flat.

The blindfolds had been abandoned at the session I tuned in for – indeed, I’m not quite sure how blind tasting works when it’s wine you’ve bought yourself. We were asked to bring one bottle of red and one of white – in deference to a) being by myself and b) not much enjoying mixing the two, I only brought a little 187ml bottle of white wine, plus most of a bottle of red that I’d opened the previous evening. This meant that I couldn’t take part in what according to Begoña is an important part of the ritual, the uncorking of the bottle, but thankfully one of the others present had two bottles she had to uncork.

We spent an amusing hour and a half or so, with much listening to hand-picked tracks to build up atmosphere, while only being allowed to take minuscule sips of wine at intervals (much pleading of “Can we drink some more wine yet?”). At around 9pm I bowed out to go and put a pizza in the oven for my dinner.

I don't seem to have attended as much in the way of mind-enhancing virtual events over this last year as I could have done. However, here are a few I have attended:

Times session on boosting your financial wellbeing

As part of my current Times subscription, I signed up for this, thinking it might be useful. It was OK though I can’t say I gleaned much from it. Remarkably uninspired advice from the Yorkshire Building Society woman to ‘Google it’ when asked by an attendee for advice on finding a suitable financial adviser.

I have, though, been thinking I might consult a financial adviser about the viability of such longer-term financial aims as I have. As well as other useful tasks that I keep putting off, such as properly understanding my pension as well as just paying in to the thing every month (though I suppose the latter is a start). I do manage to buy a weekly ticket for the National Lottery. Well, somebody has to win it.

Talk by ‘Footprints of London’

This was a talk by a chap from Footprints of London titled ‘Going down the tube: the abandoned bits of the Underground’. I had hoped it might involve actually taking us (virtually) below ground into some interesting tunnels, but it proved to be just a chap giving a presentation on closed London Underground stations. Quite interesting though. He did play us a YouTube video at one point showing some bits underground, and mentioned the London Transport Museum’s ‘Hidden London’ programme, which I’m aware of but have never properly checked out.

The stations referenced included all those Ray and I visited on our tour in July 2019, plus quite a number of others. Among those mentioned that weren't among our earlier visit were King William Street, which was apparently the northern terminus of the City and South London Railway; City Road, now the site of the Bunhill 2 Energy Centre which draws waste heat from the Northern Line tunnels (Ruth and I visited Bunhill phase 1 as part of the London Open House in 2015); South Kentish Town, which looked pretty tatty and was housing a Cash Converters in the picture he showed us; St John’s Wood Road, which had three different names before its closure in the late 1930s, and the Swiss Cottage station on the Metropolitan line (as opposed to the extant one on the Jubilee Line). It did make me want to have another day exploring these sites at some point.

Talk as part of C20 Society Spring Lecture Series

This was part of the Society’s ‘C20 Cities’ lecture series. This one focused on Milton Keynes. The speaker was a Professor Guy Ortolano, an American who works at New York University but is a historian of modern Britain. He explained that he’s a fan of post-war architecture, particularly British. He’s written a book called ‘Thatcher’s Progress’ which apparently gives a bit of an insight into Britain in the 70s. Mrs T apparently visited MK in 1979 to formally open the shopping centre – Ortolano showed us the route of her tour.

After an interesting start, the bulk of the talk was then taken up with addressing the question of flat vs. pitched roofs, which was a little dry. I think Ortolano was arguing that the decline of flat roofs in MK was not due to the popular perceptions of their deficiencies (“flat roofs leak”) but to other factors, including the traditionalist intransigence of building societies.