Didcot to Culham

Another beautiful day for the third of the February walks up the Thames. The walk explored the area upstream from Dorchester where last week's walk end, but because of the vagaries of rural bus services we decided to begin the walk from Didcot Parkway (a couple of miles south of the Thames) and walk across the fields to approach the river round the back of Wittenham Clumps. There was also a short stretch at the end of the walk away from the Thames to get to the nearest convenient railway station north of the Thames. So the Thames of this walk could more accurately be described as from Dorchester to Appleford. Didcot power station built at the end of the the modernist decade (1958-1968) was visible for the entire walk. This was partly because it stands up so high from the Thames flood plain horizon and also partly because the walk was a very strange shape this week like an elongated and northeasterly-slanted 'n' with the Thames forming the curved part of the shape. Greenpeace reckons Didcot to be the second most polluting power station in the British Isles after Drax in Yorkshire. Didcot had the highest life expectancy of any town in the UK in 2001 with those living in the town expected to reach the ripe old age of 86 - 31 years longer than the 55 years of life that could be expected in the worst parts of Middlesborough. But is a long life a good life? Didcot was also ranked as the 20th worst place to live in the UK in the 2003 book Crap Towns with "no cultural facilties" and an "awful town centre"!

After walking through the northern suburbs of Didcot for a kilometre and crossing the A4130 we suddenly found ourselves in open fields lit by bright winter sunshine, but with a slight morning mist lingering.

We arrived in Little Wittenham and noticed this intriguing tunnel box maze through a gate on the road.

We decided to explore....

And emerged in a tennis court surrounded by huge box hedges

The shady side of the bridge at Clifton Hampden

...and the sunny side. The bridge was built by the prolific Victorian architect George Gilbert Scott in 1864, the year before he designed St Pancras Station. He was also responsible for the Royal Albert Hall and the Foreign and Commonwealth Office.

Ray, CB, Chris and Raja outside the Plough in Clifton Hampden where we had lunch

CB on Clifton Hampden Bridge

The final kilometre of the walk was made more interesting because of a classic map-reading error. What I thought was a footpath turned out to be a parish boundary. We ended up walking across a couple of ploughed fields, crashing through a few hedges and climbing an embankment before reaching Culman station and finding that we had just missed a train and had an hour-and-a-half wait before the next one. We had a drink and a game of pool in the Railway Tavern at Culham station which doubled up as an Indian restaurant.