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Twenty-one people, two dogs, three pubs, six trains, one bus, one curry, one plate of beans on toast, fourteen miles, thirty-three thousand, nine hundred and ninety-eight steps. You can make it a numbers game if you like - and I often do - but there are some things that remain, thankfully, resistant to quantifiability. The amount of laughter had, the depth of friendship bonds made, and the positive effects on one's mental health that comes from being in the fresh air with good company.
Yesterday saw the TADS open their tenth (TENTH) official season with To The Oldest Place and, unusually, it was during February. It was Adam's idea to get the season going earlier and it was a good idea that it's safe to say we'll be sticking with. But before I get in to yesterday's walk I'd like to say a thankyou for everyone who took part in one of 2023's walks. I'd normally do that following November's walk but that was postponed last year so I've been waiting a few months to do this.
Last year we walked from Hook to Basingstoke (Tina ran some of the way, being chased by a horse), got soaking wet and covered in mud in the New Forest, enjoyed far more clement weather when we headed to the South Coast to split the difference between Lancing and Shoreham-by-Sea, stared down bullocks and built up calf muscles on a two day odyssey in the Peak District, and rounded it all off with a pared down but fun walk from Leatherhead to Ewell via Epsom.
So thanks to Pam, Neil B, Bee, Tina, Neil W, Denim Nick, Shep, Laura, Adam, Teresa, James, Colin, Gwen, Darren, Cheryl, Tommy, Tony, Alex, Grace, Izzie, Helen, Carole, Dylan, Michelle, Marianne, Mo, Cath, Rebecca, and my mum and dad (as well as, of course, Luca, Freddie, and Pip) for joining me on the walks, in the cafes, in the pubs, and in the curry houses. Even, in some cases, putting me up overnight. I like walking alone - but walking with you lot is far far better.
Pam was the first of the gang to appear on Saturday. We met at Paddington and took the quick train to Theale. We met Bee at the station and then walked to La Baguetterie on Theale's High Street where the troops gathered. Adam, Teresa, Shep, Laura, James, Tina, Neil (W), Ian, Arlow, and Chris. What I like to describe as a "good turnout".
There was some confusion, initially, in the cafe. It seemed we were a bigger crowd than normal - and it also seemed they weren't used to quite so many vegetarians. But when the food did come, everyone seemed happy about it (though Arlow was more interested in his action figure). The veggie breakfasts looked pretty good but I went for scramble egg and beans on toast (washed down with a cup of tea) which was very tasty.
There wasn't enough of it though and once I'd spilled some eggs and then some beans (prompting me to accidentally announce that "I've done my beans" - euw!) down my jeans there was even less. I'd like to say that was my most embarrassing moment during brunchington but that came when Pam informed me I had my jumper on back to front.
Which I did. I'd got up very early and got dressed in the dark. That's my story. As has become a TADS tradition, Adam had announced he'd be revealing what his new hobby is at some point in the day. In the past it's been learning esperanto, playing dungeons and dragons, or getting into ham radio so I was searching my mind for the sort of hobbies that nobody else would want to do.
But Adam surprised us with the revelation that he'd taken up a hobby that would actually be useful! Orienteering, map reading, something like that. He certainly looked the part with his compass, cagoule, and rainproof map round his neck. Services weren't called on yesterday but I feel they will be very soon.
Theale (its name, as my dad proudly pointed out later in the day, comes from 'the ale' as it was once home to many coaching inns (dotted along the Bath Road out of Reading) - or at least that's the legend) is a small town with a population just shy of 3,000 and, more officially, it takes its name from the Old English word 'pelu' meaning 'planks'. Which is believed to relate to the planks that were once used to create causeways through the marshes and flood plains of the area, all still very visible now.
A Roman Road (from Silchester to Dorchester-on-Thames) once passed through Theale and Roman remains were uncovered during the excavation of the Theale Old Gravel Pit between 1887 and 1897. In the middle ages, Theale became part of Tilehurst parish and during the English Civil War (1642-1651) it saw a skirmish between Prague born Prince Rupert's Royalists and the Earl of Essex's Parliamentarians. Nearly two thousand died. That's quite a 'skirmish'.
A housing estate in the village commemorates this history by having a Cavalier Close and a Roundhead Road. In World War II, Theale was used for training pilots of de Havilland Tiger Moths and, more recently - according to Adam, the High Street was used for filming The Borrowers. Lots of Morris Minors were used.
We crossed the railway line, forget about the live wires below - there were live wires above - us!, and a couple of backwaters of the Kennet and, not for the first time of the day, people ploughed on and I didn't get to read them my spiel. Well, it's all (most of it) going in the blog!
The Kennet runs for forty-five miles from Silbury Hill in Wiltshire to Reading where it joins the Thames (a tributary we'll visit next month when we resume our Thames Path project) and in and around its water many animals flourish:- water vole, grass snake, crayfish, mayflies, caddisflies, moths, brook lamprey, and that old TADS favourite, brown trout.
We turned down the Kennet and Avon Canal towpath (it runs for eighty-seven miles from Reading to Bristol's Floating Harbour) and once we'd worked out who our 'beerbuddies' were (quite a few in attendance) and I'd stopped to take a photo of an abandoned settee, we got quite a pace going and the group started spreading out. I'm glad Ian was pushing Arlow in a buggy and not me.
Me pushing the buggy I mean. I'd happily have sat in it for a while. This stretch feels more like a river than a canal. It was a crisp, dry day but some of the paths were moderately muddy. The flow of the water seemed pretty quick and the denuded branches of the deciduous trees that flanked its banks made for a pleasing prospect.
The big name along this stretch of the canal is one John Hore. Hardly a household name, admittedly, but Hore was the man who designed pretty much every lock (and there were many) we passed. A Thatcham man, he was responsible for Sulhamstead Lock, Tyle Mill Lock, the brilliantly named Monkey Marsh Lock, and Padworth Lock (all in the early eighteenth century) though Ufton Lock is not one of his. Hungerford's John Blackwell gets the credit for that - and he did the Caen Hill Locks so he knows his locks. I suppose a lock isn't out of the question.
We reached Aldermaston Wharf and the road that takes people over to The Butt Inn was closed but the railway bridge, which we crossed via some stinky stuff being pumped into the river - how you enjoying those Brexit bonuses?, was open. On the other side of that we crossed the A4/Bath Road (less busy than I'd feared) and headed up Grange Lane towards Beenham Industrial Estate where, many many years ago, I worked for my dad and used to get lifts home from one of the Arlott brothers in their coaches. Later I started driving myself and even once crashed my car, a Vauxhall Cavalier if I remember rightly, into a fence on black ice on Grange Lane outside a company that the Arlott brothers, for a reason I've never worked out, called "the isotopes".
I didn't get to read any of this spiel out on Saturday (Arlow's reaction perhaps best summing up the mood) and I didn't get to talk about Beenham either and it was Beenham we reached via a reasonably muddy, fun for the buggy, path at the top of Grange Lane.
Beenham is small, it has a population of less than five hundred but it's got a church (St.Mary's) and a pub. You can probably guess which one we visited. Beenham's only brush with infamy came in the late sixties when local David Burgess was found guilty of murdering two nine year old girls and one teenage girl, Yolande Waddington, Jeanette Wigmore, and Jacqueline Williams. It's a pretty bleak story so I won't go into depth but the investigation involved every man between the ages of sixteen and fifty in the village having to have a blood test. The investigation went on for so long that Burgess was not found guilty of Waddington's murder until 2012. A television programme was made about it.
The pub, The Six Bells, was much jollier. I'd not had a drink for a couple of weeks so I dived in with a Good Old Boy (thanks Pam) and we spread out in the back room where we met with Darren, Cheryl, Tommy, Tony, and Alex (Grace and Izzie are now old enough to be left at home on their own which certainly made me feel very old). Obviously, the dogs were there too - Freddie and Luca.
We talked rubbish, quite a lot about The Traitors as I recall, and a few people played darts. We've had bar billiards on TADS walks before but I think it was the debut of darts. Must be the Luke Littler effect.
Once I'd prised folks away from the bar (a second pint was starting to look very tempting) and Cheryl had put her wellies on, we headed back through Beenham before cutting down a footpath across a very muddy field (at one point Shep was carrying Arlow's buggy and looked like he was on the front at WWI) and through a forested area to Douai Abbey. Frederick and Luca jostling for position en route.
It wasn't long before we reached Douai Abbey and the estate that surrounds it. It looks quite out of place in the tranquil Berkshire countryside so we had to go and have a look. Douai Abbey was formed in 1903 when, due to anti-clerical lesgislation resulting from the Dreyfus affair, monks from Douai near Lille left France for Woolhampton.
A surprising choice. Perhaps they intended to go to Wolverhampton. A story has it that Midgham station was given that name because when it was first opened it was called Woolhampton (which is where it is, not Midgham - which has a third of the population of Woolhampton which itself is only home to one thousand people, I know this is confusing) and people kept arriving there thinking they were in the large West Midlands city. It won't have taken long for the penny to have dropped.
Albums have been recorded in Douai Abbey by the likes of John Milford Rutter and David Willcocks (Handel) and the Abbey dwarfs the nearby St Mary's Catholic Church even if Elstree School looks pretty big. We wound our way down a path and then a road back to the A4/Bath Road (at one point the dog gang took a slightly different, paved, route) and then made our way back over the river and the canal to The Rowbarge pub where my mum and dad were waiting.
More patiently than I'd imagined too. An old Tadley acquaintance, Chris Daborn, was in the pub but there was no time to chat to him about the barcodes on Aeros or his thirteenth consecutive bus pass because there were so many of us we had to sit out in the garden, spread across three tables.
Twenty people in total. A very enjoyable chinwag, and drink - I tool a Cotleigh Tawny Owl - 3.8% - thanks Tina, was had by all and it was very tempting to stay for another. Not least because we were running a tiny bit late and duringh the final stretch along the canal it would be getting dark. I did a quick straw poll and the vast majority wanted to ramble on - so the vast majority of us did.
The dog gang dropped out but Bee got a lift with Tony, Alex, and Frederick to Thatcham and was waiting in The Swan pub (with Ian, Arlow, and James who had taken the train) when we arrived. Our final section had been fairly uneventful but had involved a few weak bladders, a few trips to the bushes, and a well lit industrial estate that eased our journey into 'the oldest place'.
Thatcham. Nursing a Sea Fury special ale (Neil was so happy to see it he cheered, he was less happy to see Scotland doing Wales over in the Six Nations, Wales came back from 27-0 down to 27-26 but still lost), it was time for some Thatcham spiel. But nobody wanted it. Why do I even bother? Ah, because i like doing it!
Thatcham, with a population of approximately 25,000, is nearly as big as neighbouring Newbury and there is evidence of occupation there dating back to prehistoric times. It was listed in The Guinness Book of Records as a strong claimant to being the oldest continuously inhabited place in Britain (hence the walk's title). There's evidence of a neolithic, Bronze, and Iron Age settlements as well as Romano-British activity.
It's all going on. Thatcham's name may be derived from a Saxon chief called Tac, Tec, or Taca with the 'ham' part meaning village in Saxon. It could also refer to roof coverings. In the fourteenth century it was larger than Newbury and these days it's twinned with Nideggen in North Rhine-Westphalia. Thatcham Town play in the Isthmian League South Central Division (they're currently tenth, just behind Badshot Lea) and their notable former players include Lawrie Sanchez (ex-Reading and Wimbledon and once seen sweeping up outside Cartoon's Wine Bar in Reading on cup final day) and Gavin Jones who played internationally for St Vincent and the Grenadines (biggest win, 11-0 v Montserrat, biggest loss, 0-11 to Mexico). Thatcham won the FA Vase (at Wembley!) in 2018, beating Stocktown Town 1-0.
You'll gather by the amount of football stuff I've put in that there's not as much to say as Thatcham as there are lots of other places we've been on our travels. But all we need is a pub, a curry house, and a train station and it had all three of them. Ian, Arlow, James, and Chris left us in the pub and the rest of us walked (the best part of a mile) into the town centre and Nawab restaurant where we met Natalie. I'd not seen Natalie for years but she's barely aged a day and was just as nice as she's always been.
I had channa masala, a paratha, and pilau rice washed down with a couple of Cobras and we all shared poppadums and reflected on a successful day out. As ever, it was over too soon. I walked with Pam and Bee back to the station (stopping in Londis, not The Liquor Shop) for train booze, and we took the train to Reading and tried the Guardian crossword. Pam and I changed for the Paddington train and then I, yet again, took the Bakerloo line to Elephant & Castle and the 63 bus home.
It'd been a good one. It's always good to get the TADS season started. Thanks to Pam, Bee, Adam, Teresa, Shep, Laura, Tina, Neil, Chris, Ian, Arlow, James, Darren, Cheryl, Tommy, Luca, Tony, Alex, Freddie, Mum, Dad, and Natalie for joining me yesterday (and to Pam, Adam, Ian, Tina, and Neil for the photos - many used here in the blog) and even to Chris Daborn who I didn't get to speak to personally. Next months it's Flowers of Romance, Dorking to Reigate, and though I'm expecting a smaller, more 'selective' crowd, I'm hoping you'll all be wearing your jumpers inside out. It's the TADS way.
