Naquada

As well as the huge number of other things we’re currently juggling, this weekend was the big walk. The Hangers Way, a 21-mile long-distance walking route through Hampshire.

The route begins at Alton Railway Station, out into the lush Hampshire countryside, along a series of steep-sided wooded hills, known as “The Hangers”, through the pretty market town of Petersfield to finish at Queen Elizabeth Country Park.

The walk’s divided into eight sections, each around an hour to an hour and a half, providing a really good day out if you chose to do just one section in a day. The route also passes through the famous village of Selborne, once home to Gilbert White, the 18th century naturalist and author of “The Natural History of Selborne”.

The Hangers are probably the richest woodlands on English chalk. Here the chalk that covers the central and northern parts of Hampshire abruptly ends in a scarp slope giving way to farmland.

Our plan was to walk from Alton down to Hawkley on the Saturday, and then from Hawkley onto Queen Elizabeth Country Park on the Sunday, stopping off at The Hawkley Inn over night on the Saturday.

We started off at about 11am from Alton having played car shuffle to get transport back in the right locations, and made pretty good progress. Most of the walk was fairly easy, but started to become harder work as we headed into the woods and hangers.

The main problem was mud, lots of it. The uphill sections were made particularly difficult with thick, sticky mud along most of the path. As anyone who’s walked in thick mud will tell you, this makes an uphill walk twice as tough.

Even though I’d gone out and got brand new waterproofs to replace my old ones, there was very little rain on route, and we made good enough progress to take an extended stop in Selborne at The Oates Museum and Tea Parlour. We were actually pretty muddy, so they did ask us to remove our walking boots, much to the disgust of the local gentry enjoying afternoon tea.. We also left a bit of dried mud here and there (sorry!)

Onwards from there was probably most of the worst of the mud, and it was only when we could see Hawkley far in the distance (or at least the church tower) we felt anything like being near the end of the walk. The idea of ‘it’s not far now just a few miles’ just about kept us going.

We got to The Hawkley Inn at about 6pm, having walked almost 12 miles, picked up the cars and got changed for dinner at 7pm. If you are doing this walk and need an over night you have to stop at the Hawkley Inn, it’s listed as a three star AA, but to be honest the beds, rooms and buildings were some of the best I’ve stayed in. Five really luxurious rooms with en-suite bathrooms.

Another plus point was they served Guinness and really really excellent food!! I also did a bit of magic in the evening, but I was so knackered my brain wasn’t really with it enough to do much, and I kind of jazzed it as I went along.

The forecast for the weekend was actually rain and snow, and over the pints in the evening we were joking about waking up to deep snow.. I’m not sure we could have been any more surprised to wake up to a blizzard at 8am!!!

Although we were really aching the night before, we’d left the decision about the second days walking till the morning, and as we sat waiting for the staff at the inn to struggle into the village to make us our breakfast, we decided that it would have been unwise to walk the second half that weekend. Even if the snow had stopped and melted, the mud would have been so much worse.

It also gave us the ability to book back into the Hawkley Inn for the second attempt sometime in the future!!

The walk is wonderful, and as it wasn’t raining and howling a gale as per previous walks, I managed to get some decent photos on route.

We also found a great book, Room at The Inn laying on the table at the Hawkley Inn, an AA book that details a number of good local inns with short to medium circular walks in the area, as well as local places to see and things to do.

A few snowballs later, we headed back home to clean our books, warm up, relax and unwind.

I’ve now also got a fairly good GPS track for the route from Alton down to Hawkley which I’ll post up at some point for anyone who wants to follow the same route (complete with the odd mistake!)

I can highly recommend the walk, and the accommodation at the inn, they’ll even make you up sandwiches for the following days walk (and huge ones at that!)