Spa and walk at Donnington, plus some history

Friday 24 August

Ray has been a member for a while at the health club at the Donnington Valley Hotel just outside Newbury – or I should say, Donnington & Co, as it appears to have rebranded itself. He has signed me in as a guest a few times now, which is a pleasant way to spend a morning and I’ve booked in a 25-minute spa treatment each time, mostly the Scalp Ritual so far. A couple of Fridays ago we spent a morning there, had lunch (food is pretty good) and then went for a walk.

The area is of some interest to old/disused road and path geeks. The address of the hotel is Old Oxford Road. The hotel is now the main destination on this road, which carries on more or less parallel with the A339 as far as J13 of the M4, where it ends at a roundabout. There used to be a pub, the Fox & Hounds, further up from the hotel, but this is now closed as of earlier this year. It probably lost most of its passing trade a long time ago when the M4 was built and a new connecting road was built from Newbury to junction 13. Indeed, ChatGPT tells me that its fortunes were shaped by changes to the road network around Newbury:

The Street View image below shows the pub in 2024. I have a memory of it driving past it some years back (OK, a lot of years back) and it seeming in rather an out of the way place. In the late 1990s the Newbury bypass was constructed near the pub (that’s the road bridge in the distance in the Street View image), presumably adding to its difficulties by making it both out of the way and much less peaceful than it was before.

2024 Street View image of the Fox & Hounds, Donnington

Back to our walk. Ray wanted to start off by calling in at the golf club Pro Shop. So we started by walking up the road a short way and turning in by this sign to follow a road up to the golf club. He told me that Donnington Valley golf club used to be a private members’ club, but is now pay and play and is owned by the hotel.

A vibrant green tee

There’s some sort of party barn there, which was hosting a wedding that day – in fact we may have wandered through somewhere we weren’t supposed to. There’s a golfers’ bar at the back of Snelsmore House, and the pro shop is nearby, though Ray only popped in briefly in the end. The golf course was looking pretty brown and crispy, except for the greens and tees which had been kept a vibrant green.

Golfers' bar at the back of Snelsmore House

From Snelsmore House, we retraced our steps to the road and followed a footpath up behind some buildings and through some woods, to come out on the B4494 Wantage Road. The OS map appeared to show a footpath going off the other side of the road, but we could see no evidence of this on the ground. I came up with a cunning theory that the path had probably been re-routed post-Newbury bypass construction – the clues being the presence of the bypass a matter of metres away, and the green dashes on the map appearing to lead straight towards it. We crossed over the road bridge and walked a little way and there was indeed a relatively new-looking footpath sign going in to the left. We followed this, initially down a road past some houses, and then met up with what was clearly the former path, as we could see a fence some distance off with the bypass just beyond it.

Newish footpath sign off the B4494

Former footpath, now fenced off

Relevant area of the OS map

On the map snip, 'CH' (Clubhouse) marks Snelsmore House.

We turned left at a T-junction of paths and followed the path past a property called Beau House and along the road. The road crosses over the A34. There’s another golf club, Donnington Grove, in this area.

We past a couple of houses and a deserted barn from the former Castle Farm. The sign about the Limousin herd now seems to have gone from the end of the building, but I photographed it on a previous walk in 2021.

Donnington Castle

This path passes Donnington Castle. We made our way down to Donnington village and then turned left onto another footpath leading back up northwards towards a spot marked on the map as Nothing Hill.

Path leading towards Nothing Hill

This passes an interesting feature on the left: some land which Ray reckons was originally a 9-hole golf course. It sounds from Chat GPT as though this original 9-hole course was taken out of use when the course east of Wantage Road was expanded on that side of the road to be a full 18 holes. It's not the best photograph, but it shows some high fencing on the left and the ground in the right half of the picture was a raised flat area in manner of a tee or green.

Possible former golf course land at Nothing Hill

There’s some quite interesting history, if assorted AI queries are to be believed:

• The golf course at Donnington Valley began as a family venture in the late 1980s. According to this 2001 Golf Business News piece, the Cox family built the course themselves on land they owned and turned part of their home into a bar and committee room.
• The home in question appears to have been Fairfield Farm Donnington, which a local Facebook group tells me was owned by S L Cox and his two brothers, was sold and redeveloped as Donnington Valley Hotel and golf course.
• The hotel’s website confirms that Nothing Hill used to be part of the golf course.
• 
  Businessman Sir Peter Michael bought the Cox family's golf course around 1990 and it was extended to 18 holes. ChatGPT located a 1991 ad for a Head Greenkeeper for a "recently extended" 18 hole course.
• The hotel was built on the site of the original clubhouse, with golf facilities initially incorporated into the hotel.
• Sir Peter then acquired the neighbouring Snelsmore House estate in the mid-1990s. The golf course was redesigned and Snelsmore House became the clubhouse. It sounds as though the holes west of the B4494 might have been abandoned at this point and additional holes built on the newly-acquired land.

Old OS Pathfinder map showing Fairfield Farm

New OS Explorer map showing the hotel

The left-hand pic is from a 1981 OS "Pathfinder" map that my parents passed on to me. The right-hand pic is from the modern OS Explorer 158.

Little Car: Postscript

In the wake of the silver Fiesta's departure, I thought I would cheer myself up by asking ChatGPT to write a poem about it. Because I have been amused by its previous attempts at poetry, I thought this would be a bit of a laugh. To deter it from going on at too much length, I asked it to write a haiku. Unfortunately its output was rather sweet. (I owned it for 15 years, not 19, but included '2007' in the keywords.)

Silver friend departs
Nineteen years of faithful roads
One last turn away

This hasn't helped.

My Birthday 2026

This year’s birthday treat was meant to be another Perambulation courtesy of Stefi Orazi of Modernist Estates, this time Richmond and Ham. I had – of course – booked us a night in the Richmond Premier Inn and we’d been going to spend the 13th and 14th August there. However, at the beginning of the week it became apparent that very high temperatures were forecast for the Thursday, and it dawned on me that it wasn’t going to be ideal temperatures for walking, plus we were both a bit worried about leaving Cassius unattended without us around to fan him/open windows where necessary. Our petsitter Sam would have been coming in, but she’s really only paid to feed him and attempt the odd stroke (which I’m sure he is unimpressed by). So we cancelled the hotel and stayed at home, though I did still have the two days off.

In the event, Thursday 13 August did prove to be the hottest day in the UK so far in 2026, with the top temperature, of 38.1 degrees C, recorded at Kew Gardens, a tantalising less than one mile from the hotel we'd booked into. The hotel would, hopefully, have been air-conditioned but I think the walk would have been a bit of a slog. I'm hoping we can rebook it for some time in the autumn, though as Ruth has just started a new job it might be a month or so before we can go.

 

Proximity of the Premier Inn Richmond to Kew Gardens

I spent the weekend of my birthday in Wales with family – sans Ruth, as she’s no longer leaving Cassius for more than a night. Mum, Dad and I spent the Saturday night at Dave’s, where we had dinner in the garden courtesy of their outdoor pizza oven. Dave did the ovening bit while Alys worked hard in the kitchen assembling pizzas. After that we played Flip 7 which Huw won by some way, Nia maintaining that it’s just not her game.

Pizza oven

The following morning I made coffee courtesy of the mini-cafetiere I carry on most trips, plus a Disney princess mug. We had bacon bagels.

Several of us – possibly not including the kids, but they were hauled along anyway – decided we fancied a bit of a stroll, so we went to the Allt-yr-yn nature reserve for a walk – not somewhere I’d been before. A short drive from Dave’s house. The walk took in a section of the Monmouthshire & Brecon Canal that runs parallel to the M4 - Wikipedia suggests that this bit is the Crumlin Arm. This section wasn’t over-watery and certainly not navigable.

Late in the walk we got to an area with some rope swings, which I think perked the kids up.

After lunch we had several rounds of Racing Demon, which I almost won, but Nia refused to be beaten into second place and insisted on one final round, which she proceeded to win.

We had several varieties of cake, including an excellent Swiss roll made by Huw.

Huw's Swiss roll

Goodbye, Little Car

I have said goodbye to my silver 2007 Ford Fiesta, after 15 years of ownership. Which I know is quite a long time to keep a car, but it was still serving my needs, decent cars are expensive and I don’t see the point in changing cars for the sake of it.

Parked in the garage, shortly after I'd acquired it in May 2011

The Fiesta came via Bufton's of Peterchurch. Bufton's have now supplied my parents with four or so cars and they sourced this one for me in 2011. Prior to this, I had not owned a car for a few years, as I worked locally here in Reading and found it less hassle to hire a car for the odd long-distance journey. However, having accepted a job at the OU, I knew I’d need one, a) to travel back and forth between Reading and Milton Keynes, as the train journey is cumbersome; b) because Milton Keynes was clearly built around cars. MK is low-density and spread out for a UK town and it isn’t simply a case of walking from A to B, whereas in Reading, often it is (and where it isn’t, Reading has a much better bus service than MK does).

Snowy at Old Groveway in 2012

The Fiesta proved to be an excellently reliable, sturdy little vehicle. Over the years it’s had some repairs done, but nothing obscenely expensive - I think the priciest single repair was a clutch replacement in 2014 but that was sub-£400. In all the years I owned it, I think I only had to call the AA out three times, and one of those was to my home during lockdown when the car's battery had gone flat. I had managed to put quite a large number of miles on it: at its MOT in May 2011, when I got it, it had 45,128 miles on the clock; at its MOT this August it had 191,144. Although not the most comfortable drive over long distances, it was still reliably getting from A to B and had not reached the stage of "exciting" unpredictability that my Renault 5 reached the year before I offloaded it. So I took quite some time ruminating over whether it made sense to offload a still mechanically reliable vehicle and spend a not inconsiderable sum of money that I could have spent on other things, like a new kitchen. Also, more sentimentally, it had served me well and I was just going to abandon it, alone and bewildered, for the lure of a shinier, newer vehicle? What sort of a way was that to reward years of faithful service? This Reddit thread didn't help with all of that.

My friend Matt owns a 1987 Peugeot 205 which he evidently regards as part of the family. However, I’m reasonably sure that Matt’s Peugeot only does small local journeys. Most of my driving currently is between Reading and Milton Keynes (on the route that I usually take, about 70 miles) or to Wales to visit family (around 120 miles from Reading to Abergavenny), plus the occasional UK-based holiday. I do as little local driving as possible. For the last couple of years I have found the Fiesta less comfortable for longer journeys with pain up my right leg after about an hour of driving. I’ll also admit to being tempted by the navigation screens and climate control that a newer car promised, but then berated myself for shallowness, wanton extravagance etc. Also, various minor things had stopped working – most recently, the passenger door had stopped being willing to open from the outside. Nothing insurmountable, but small things can build up.

Looking a bit solitary in the car park at the Wolverton Park flats in 2019

Because I like to have some parameters, and I’d been impressed with the Fiesta’s reliability, I decided to go for another Fiesta. I’ve since discovered from Bufton's that Fiestas from the end years of production – Ford ceased production of the Fiesta in 2023 – are a bit like gold dust. To cut a few months’ car search story short, and skipping over several possibilities that didn’t come off, I am now the owner of a 2023 Ford Fiesta Trend. The new car is a delicious tomato red. It isn’t one of the turbo engines – actually, at only 1084 cc, its engine is smaller than my 2007 Fiesta, at 1242. Which I suppose isn’t ideal, but other things seemed right about it. Certainly driving it back on the motorway, I wouldn’t say its acceleration felt turbo-charged but I think it will be adequate for my purposes. It's a more comfortable and smoother ride than my old Fiesta - something I could tell as soon as I drove it out onto the road from Bufton's yard, even without Dad commenting darkly that the suspension was better on this one.

Parked near the Premier Inn MK Theatre District, where I often stay. Just back from being cleaned at Roni’s Peartree Bridge.

Mervyn Bufton had agreed that they would take back the 2007 Fiesta and give me something in part-exchange. I was not expecting very much, given that it had done heavy mileage and had some cosmetic damage, and was fine with the £500 I got for it. I was a bit more downcast when, having tried to assure Mervyn that it would be a good car for someone as a local runabout, he said “I don’t know what I’m going to do with it, to be honest” and said that apparently all the youngsters have high expectations, which I assume means more gadgetry than the old car has. Bloody hell. I drove off with visions of it being fed into a giant compactor as soon as my back was turned.

Parked under a tree in the OU’s East car park, July this year

Having a bath at the Hill's Meadow car wash last week

Ready to return to Buftons. Its last journey? 

I'll finish with its successful MOT in July this year. Relatively few advisories really. Rust schmust.

Weekend out on Ray's boat

Saturday 4 and Sunday 5 July

Ruth and I joined Ray on his boat for a bit of a pootle down (actually, pedantically, up) the canal. The boat had been in the dry dock near Newbury marina for the week prior, having some repairs done and also for Ray to have a chance to do some painting of the underside. On the Friday evening he collected the boat and moored up overnight by Greenham Lock, where we walked over to meet him on the Saturday morning. The plan was to have a leisurely meander back to his mooring at Kintbury, stopping overnight on the way.

Leaving the mooring upstream of Greenham Lock

The walk from Newbury station to Greenham Lock made me wonder whether Greenham Lock Cottage was still standing. A friend of Mum’s lived there in the 1970s with her husband and two children and I remember going over there to visit them more than once. If I remember correctly, the cottage was accessed by a footbridge from the town side though I assume there must have been vehicle access, albeit looking at the site on Google Maps I can’t see where this would have been. I’m sure I remember there being an access bridge more or less opposite the cottage, plus a shakier-looking footbridge a bit upstream of it. However, memory being what it is, who the hell knows at this stage.

I asked the Facebook group ‘Memories of Newbury and West Berkshire’ whether anyone knew whether the cottage had been demolished – certainly I couldn’t see it, but the whole area has changed so much with the creation of the marina that I can’t really get my bearings. One chap replied saying that its site was the red rectangle on this Google Earth view:

This Heritage Gateway page states that:

The core of the cottage at Greenham Lock is of probable 18th century date, with a succession of later additions. The property was proposed for demolition and replacement with a new dwelling, and as part of the planning conditions, Historic Building Recording was carried out in January 2014 by Lang Hall Archaeology. The report concluded that the modern 'periodising' features have obscured the principal dating evidence and that only the core cottage is of any architectural or historic value.

Though the building is adjacent to Greenham Lock on the Kennet and Avon Canal (formerly the Kennet Navigation), it is unclear whether it was historically a lock keeper's cottage. The First Edition Ordnance Survey mapping of 1880-81 appears to label this as a boat house.

It clearly wasn’t still a lockkeeper’s cottage by the 1970s, if it ever was, as Mum confirmed that her friend’s husband had worked for Honeywell and had nothing to do with the canals.

Further searching confirms that the cottage was indeed demolished, and a new build erected in its place. Greenham Construction lists the New GLC among its portfolio of work (with some inaccuracies – it’s not in the centre of Newbury; there’s possibly some confusion with the lock cottage at Newbury Lock, which was indeed in the centre of Newbury, though it was demolished in the 1980s. It sounds as though GLC might have lasted a bit longer). Here’s a more extensive blurb re the construction of the new property: LOCK KEEPERS COTTAGE, SUSTAINABLE REPLACEMENT DWELLING ON AN ISLAND SITE, which includes the following:

The historic canal-side cottage was much loved by the local community and those travelling along the Kennet & Avon Canal, but in reality, it was flood-prone and uncomfortable to live in.

As a child, I remember having mixed views on it. It was certainly quite excitingly unusual to access someone’s house via a footbridge. If I remember correctly, the amendments made to it included a 70s-style slatted staircase leading up from the middle of the living area to the bedrooms; I remember that there was an additional back staircase, presumably the original. I can’t say I ever hankered after living there. As a child I determinedly favoured nice modern houses that weren’t by dark bodies of water, a preference that it’s fair to say I still have in adulthood.

Passing Newbury Wharf

We set off, passing Newbury Wharf. Ray bemoaned that recent redevelopments at the wharf have not included any boaters’ facilities; there are none between Kintbury and Aldermaston which given the increasing popularity of narrowboats seems a bit ridiculous. We passed under the little 18th-century Town Bridge.

Approaching Town Bridge

Some volunteers were manning Newbury Lock so we didn’t have to do the gates ourselves. The next obstacle after the lock is the swing bridge at West Mills. Operation of this is intended to be a simple matter of turning the key in the lock and then pressing and holding a button to open and close the bridge. Opening it went fine, and Ray took the boat through and moored up just past the bridge. Closure wasn’t quite so smooth: I kept my finger down until the bridge had got itself back in position and the level crossing-style gates had started to lift, then took it off, carelessly assuming that they’d make it the rest of the way up by themselves. Unfortunately they didn’t and stopped where they were. The handful of pedestrians who’d started forward to cross the bridge as the gates started to lift stepped back uncertainly, while I took my finger on and off the button in agitation and the gates jumped up and down. Eventually I took a punt on just holding it down again and hoping that the gates completed opening, which thankfully they did. The elderly couple who’d paused in their walk to watch me operate the bridge, with helpful input at one point along the lines of “ooh, you’ve messed that up”, shuffled off at this point.

Approaching Newbury Lock

Swing bridge open

Thankfully there are no more swing bridges between Newbury and Kintbury, though there are several between Newbury and Reading, and there’s one at Hungerford. There are seven further locks, though in the event we only passed through three on the Saturday before calling a halt to the day's boating. Guyer’s and Higg’s (just beyond the A34 bridge) went OK; Benham proved a bit of a git. The footboard looked ropey, wobbling and with the edge breaking off it, though Ruth did gingerly make her way across it OK; more problematically, one of the balance beams on the upper gates was bowing in the middle, making it tricky to push. I pushed it for a while but all it did was bow even more, while the gate remained unmoved. Ray was eventually reduced to ramming the gates with the boat, which may have shifted something; he and Ruth then pushing together on the non-broken beam managed to do the trick. I’m not sure what happens if you get stuck in a lock – I assume there’s a number you can call, as I guess it must have happened to people.

This Reading Chronicle piece from May notes that repairs had recently been completed to one of the lock gate beams at Benham Lock. It did look as though a piece of metal had been nailed over the dodgy area, presumably to hold it steady, but it was still clearly bowing. I suppose the metal might at least prevent it actually snapping in two.

Ray declared that he’d had enough after wrestling with Benham Lock – it was a warm day – so we moored up for the night just short of Hamstead Marshall. We cooked dinner – I had brought a small tonnage of pork belly strips from the Caversham Butcher. Due to my unfamiliarity with Ray’s oven it was quite late by the time we finally ate and we’d tanked a fair bit of wine by that time, so we only made a scrappy meal and had some meat over to bring back with us.

Our mooring position was just up from a small weir – I assume one of the many points where the River Kennet comes in/goes out. Looking at the map, we were just opposite Hamstead Park, where Ray and I had walked quite recently. There was some sort of tributary going off just opposite us, which online research suggests was probably one end of the Craven Fishery. We could see some sort of little wooden structure, though it was hard to get a good view of it.

Channel going off opposite

The little wooden structure

On the Sunday morning, we passed through four further locks: Hamstead, Copse (lovely shady position), Dreweatt’s and finally Kintbury.

Copse Lock

Approaching Kintbury. Horse-drawn barge moored up