24 at the station, joined by another later, I am told, so 25 on this walk - quite like the old days. Grey skies predominated thoughout the day, but it did not rain. The coolness was welcome to some after yesterday’s heat.

There were definitely some warps in the space-time continuum today, because having been left far behind by the group due to attention to nature - swallows! house martins! - I was astonished when approaching Odiham to find eleven walkers coming up behind me. I wonder where they had been.

A few took a shortcut to the aforementioned town, but most did the full route around the Greywell marsh reserve. Once in the town a large chunk of the group went to Bel & The Dragon for lunch. Whose idea this was is a mystery, since everyone later said they had been following everyone else. We had three nice tables on the outside terrace (more house martins overhead - and swifts!!), but the food was mostly rated rather niggardly in portion sizes. Mine was the exception because I had fish and chips (accompanied by mushy peas, tartare sauce and - bizarrely - curry sauce).

In the afternoon some did the shorter walk, some the main. Having often done this walk in winter, it was interesting to see the canal sides all lush with flowers, and the fields likewise. A few of us looked at the Barley Mow pub but it did not look that inviting. A fairly sizeable party eventually assembled for tea, drinks and mini-cheddars in the garden of the Winchfield Inn. We got the 18.05 train.

There was some mud and also some standing water, mainly on woodland stretches but also on the heath, but it was no comparison to yesterday's outing (Kintbury to Bedwyn). Not much wet from above though, as the forecast had improved even from the night before and apart from a few very short squalls it was mainly dry and often sunny

The rivers though were full and rushing, so much so that stretches of the Whitewater looked ready for hosting a rafting competition!

5 walkers, 4 of which lunched at The Bel & Dragon, starting with some bubbly to send off the year. Walker 5 was only ever caught again on the platform in Winchfield where we all had just about missed the 16.27 train. The later journey was enjoyable insofar as we could admire the youth of Britain going to town for NYE parties and clubbing. Bless them.

The walk itself was thoroughly enjoyable, varied as it is and with plenty of interesting buildings old and new(ish), as well as some very pretty villages and churches and some fine scenery. We saw egrets and a heron and along the canal were overtaken at head height by a couple of swans with their impressive wingspan. Later we encountered a herd of Highland cows and some sheep. We were also treated to several rainbows as well as some amazing light towards the end, when dark and brooding skies suddenly gave way to the sun setting right behind us, visible in the back along the canal and through some trees, followed by the ever lower sun setting the remaining fluffy clouds 'on fire'. The trees caught the red and orange tones as well. A fitting end to the walking year.

Now bring on 2024, and 'Keep On Walking'

Two omissions from the report: I forgot to mention the mudfest that were the pastures just after lunch, along the fringes of Odiham. They are linked by about 10 metre wide gaps fringed by bramble patches. Cattle had turned those grassy gaps into deep gooey masses of treacle. One booted walker had to be pulled out, thankfully with the boots still on. The two sneakered walkers had to just suck it up and ship it in, the mud that is.

Also, the pub at the end was closed over year end. Not that their website tells you that. But their Facebook page does ...

Hi Sean. Thanks for posting this walk. Do you know if the there are any works blocking access to the canal towpath sections? The website refers potential walkers to the Basingstoke Canal Authority 'Closure and Works' web page, but this is hard to relate to the walk notes. Thanks if you can offer any further insight.

I did check this website earlier (and some other pages online). The only planned works in the vicinity were at Crookham Wharf but that would only affect the 24 km Long Walk option. In any case that work seems to be on hold. Still, you can never rule out a fallen tree or some other incident...

4 on this walk. Weather overcast but no actual rain. Street party in Odiham taking over the High Street. We managed by luck to get a table at the Bel and Dragon, which was excellent but expensive.

We took the short option due to menacing cloud. Recent improvements the this walk route have made it far more enjoyable.

Andrew

4 overcast

A nice touch to post a walk with a medieval Pest House en route. I wonder if Public Health England have reopened it for modern travellers needing to be quarantined? Be careful not to show any symptoms as you enter Odiham!

I can’t find this week’ s walk details

I am not sure what you mean, Anoymous: be more specific. The walk post contains the walk details and links to the walk directions. What can't you find?

Just wanted to know the train time for this walk.

The train time is in the walk post!! Click on the title for this walk, and the details will be revealed to you.

That’s the problem, when you click on the walk post, nothing happens! It’s been like this for the past few weeks, after the website was down for a couple of days, ‘to make improvements’. It used to work perfectly well before. Now when you go on the website, you cannot find this week’s walk and when you click on another link, you can see the walk post but when you click on it, no further details appear. I just wanted to know the train time, which to catch. Thank you for your help anyway.

The walk details are displaying correctly for me when I access the website on my laptop and also on my mobile phone.

You could try using a different device or a different web browser or rebooting/clearing the cache on your browser.

Yes, that is all I can think of too.

The train is the 9.24 from Waterloo to Hook. From Clapham Junction get the 9.52 Portsmouth train to Woking and change there, arriving 10.12, departing 10.19.

Good luck getting the technical issue sorted!

I mean 9.42 train

I have the same problem, Anonymous. I think there have been updates to some software that make the imported text unreadable. I can’t read wall details on my pc anymore - only on my phone.If you can update your browser it might help.. But ask an expert. I know nothink.

What you don’t expect in July is mud. Quite a lot of it, gloopy and slithery. Sometimes underfoot it felt like January. Whoever heard the like?

18 on this walk. I am adding the walk author to the tally since he said he did about half the route, though we only met him in the pub near the end.

As forecast we had light rain in the morning . Annoying rather than soaking. I found the new start across Bartley Heath perhaps slightly less enchanting than the old one across Hook Common, but we are told it is drier underfoot, and since it was certainly a bit soggy today, it was probably just as well we weren’t going the old way.

Odiham Castle was still there, perhaps looking a bit less spruce than it did in King John’s day, but hey, that medieval hardcore was built to last. I loved the nature reserve bit by the river beyond Greywell. Lots of water forget-me-not and meadowsweet, and three magnificent scarlet tiger moths, docile enough in the poor weather to allow their photos to be taken. No dragonflies or damselflies, though.

In Odiham some used the churchyard gravestones as backrests as they ate their sarnies, while others went to the Bell and the Dragon pub, whose very name tells you it won’t be cheap. But service was efficient and the portions decent. Nice nosh, when all is said and done.

After lunch the walk route had mysteriously changed from the last time I did it, taking us away from the canal and past a field of immense Suffolk horses (retired from pulling brewery drays apparently) and into an intensely muddy wood, where only the foliage on the trees reminded of the season. Later we walked along a broad and substantial path along a canal that has somehow escaped the notice of the OS map app. There was a bit of sun, but only a bit. When it came out it felt about ten degrees hotter. (I remember this feeling: it is called “summer”…)

Noted long walker types decided not after all to do the long walk. Instead nine of us (plus walk author) stopped in the garden of the Barley Mow pub. There a byzantine ordering system involving WhatsApp and an extremely grumpy member of staff (who said she was holding the fort alone) nearly put us off. But in the end we were allowed to give our orders in analogue form and enjoyed (variously) gin, tea and mini-cheddars.

Six of us also guzzled two bottles of wine, four beers and about eight bags of crisps and nuts in the garden of the Winchfield Inn, and we then got the (whatever time it was) train back to Covid Central (aka Waterloo, which incidentally was as busy at 9am this morning as I have ever seen it on a Saturday. Where all these people were going on a rainy day bears me. But I suppose others could say the same of us.)

Upwards 18 of us on this walk on a dull overcast day with drizzly rain at times .The group soon split into fast and medium speed walkers, meeting up briefly at the ruins of Odiham Castle. On reaching Odiham some stopped for lunch at the Bell, to find the service slow despite a near empty pub - apparently the food was OK when it eventually arrived. By contrast, the Waterwitch pub was buzzing and I was lucky to find a table - and be served an excellent meal promptly and with a smile. In the afternoon most of us opted for the short, 10 mile version of the walk, staying on the Basingstoke Canal all the way to the outskirts of Winchfield. A small group bizarrely decided to go off piste for the final leg to the tea pub - they may still be out there, faffing about. The Winchfield Inn served welcoming pots of tea, enjoyed by those who stopped before heading for the railway station nearby. The early finishers caught the 16-05 hrs train and there were a number of us on the 16-35 hrs train. If the off-pisters eventually made it to the pub they probably caught the 17-05 hrs service back to London. Although today's walk is not the best in the SWC repertoire it made for a perfectly pleasant winter's walk in very nice company which more than made up for the dull weather.

Well Marcus, as you probably gathered I didn't manage to extract myself from the pub in time for the 1635 but I was joined by 3 others on the 1705, who had completed the walk by different routes. So the off-pisters (who in fairness just went wrong by missing one stile) are still unaccounted for.

11 on this walk, including the walk poster who caught us up at lunch.

We were promised sun but in fact the morning was grey, with the cloud breaking only at about 2pm. There were then some nice sunny intervals but the cloud soon dipped behind a bank of cloud to the west. So cloudy with a bit of sun .

The trouble with having a lot of lunch options is no one can agree which to patronise. After complex negotiations, five tried the Red Lion but as it was busy with Christmas parties it recommended we had soup and sandwiches. One (me) decided I could do better in the coffee shop two doors down where I had a soup and baked potato. By the time I had finished the others four in the pub, joined by the walk poster, were just getting their grub. There was nowhere to sit and the sun was shining, so I wandered off.

A nice sunny walk along the canal. In general this is a very pleasant walk and a good choice for a winter’s day. Getting to the decision point I found it was after 3pm (and there was due to be only a crescent moon) so I decided to do the short ending along the canal. Did the main group do the full walk?

At Winchfield there was disappointingly no tea because the pub was closed mid afternoon. Luckily I was just in time for the 16.05 train. Three picnickers were also on this, having also done the short walk.

I look forward to hearing how the main group got on.

6 of the rest walked the full main walk and got to the station just in time for the 16.35. I thought the stretches in the morning along the Whitewater River were an unmitigated delight, and Odiham Castle is very interesting. Overall it's a good walk for all seasons, as even now there was little evidence of mud. The Red Lion is probably the best choice of the three pubs in the village, with The Bell more of a boozer and the Bel and Dragon more a restaurant. We had no complaints.

For walk directions click here. Click "Main" under the map before printing to eliminate unneeded directions.

Should this read 'Click "Shorter walk omitting Dogmersfield loop (16km)"?

I was leaving it up to walkers whether they want to do the Dogmersfield Loop or not. If you definitely don't want to do it, click on the shorter walk omit it, yes.

You can click "Shorter walk ..." if you're quite sure you won't want to do the Dogmersfield loop. But if you want to keep your options open, click "Main" or better still download and print the PDF which will give you directions for all variants of the walk.

26 on this walk, including one late starter who missed a connection. Perhaps it was the glorious sunshine and frozen ground but this seemed to be a wonderful winter outing, with several visits to the scenic and rural Basingstoke Canal, each one different. At first it was half empty of water, then fuller, and then in the afternoon frozen for a long stretch. Only perhaps towards the end of the walk did it start to seem a bit samey.

Hook Common could have been a squelchfest if the ground had not been frozen solid: the Hampshire Wildlife Trust's attempts to restore this as wet heathland seem to be working.... In general this might or might not have been a muddy walk in normal conditions but we never got to find out as the ground remained hard as a brick. Odiham Castle ruins were interesting - who knew it had such a role in our history? The little diversion to a hunting lodge and round a (frozen) lake in the afternoon was also charming.

Odiham offered lots of choices for lunch, though the "friendly hostelry" of the Bell was not doing food. Eight of went to Next Door (that was its name), which was basically a pub trying to be a restaurant: orders at table, but the food came quickly enough. At least one went to the Creperie and I don't know where the others went.

At the end of the walk the silent barman of the Winchfield Inn stolidly served tea in pots, one at a time. We did not get to sample its garden... The 17.05 train was indicated on the platform as going to Waterloo, but on the train said it was going to Woking, so we got out expecting to have to change as predicted in the walk post. But the terminating Woking train was then attached to four more carriages (while we waited in the cold on the platform) and then went on to Waterloo. It would have been nice if the guard, when he checked our tickets, could have told us this. Aren't we always being told that onboard train staff are a vital part of customer service?

Photos of today's walk are on our Facebook page:

https://www.facebook.com/Saturday.Walkers.Club/posts/1342537259099974

Thank you Bridie for all your hard work.

Yes reverting to Nicolas Alberys wonderful timetable is one idea.The poster has got to have access to a computer.

All best for the future.

jfk

On a hot and mostly sunny day 12 walkers were not deterred by the proximity of this walk to the M3; indeed one walker complained that she couldn't hear it as promised in the walk notes. We also overtook a gang of four doing the walk independently, who will doubtless look more closely at This Week's Walks next time. Our group mostly stuck together and all took time out to inspect the various sights en route, although one disappeared after our cheap'n'cheerful lunch at The Bell to forge a new route to Fleet station.

A noisy beer festival at the Barley Mow persuaded us to carry on to the Winchfield Inn for some much-needed liquid intake in its beer garden before the 17:35 train. In this last stretch we caught up with two walkers who'd gone on ahead, stumbling out of the bushes with an unconvincing tale of dodgy walk directions. A good day out for all!