At the start of the Covid-19 lockdown, people in non-risk categories and who were showing no signs of the virus were allowed one local walk (exercise) per day. Later on, around the beginning of May, you were allowed to travel by car to a place to walk, but the journey in the car should be less than the length of time of the walk. From Wednesday 12 May 2020 people could do unlimited amount of exercise – maintaining social distancing, of course. Then on 1st June lockdown was eased once again – you could meet 6 people in the open air.
Bernie Newnham
Please send walk pictures… We’ve just been on our afternoon walk (03/04/2020).
Nick Ware
We’re very spoilt for choice here in Cranleigh. (03/04/2020).
Elstead Common has to be the most photogenic location imaginable, different every time you see it. It’s an ancient natural wetland area, superbly maintained by the Surrey Wildlife Trust. Well worth the car ride to get there!
Mike Giles
Seen (05/04/2020) from the foot/cycle path alongside the A24 between Burford Bridge and Mickleham, a route we’ve never bothered to walk before, but we’re trying to ring the changes, now that we always walk from home.
Dave Mundy
A couple of pictures from my son’s walk in Lincolnshire today (05/04/2020). No problem social distancing there, even the dogs are obeying the rules!
John Nottage
Out in front of my house where I walk. That road is normally a car park full from end to end, especially on a sunny Sunday.
Peter Neill
We’re very lucky. This is the view from my front door (05/04/2020). The field leads to a wood which leads to more fields and woods.
Garth Tucker
Here’s one taken in the middle of Suburbia, Twickenham to be exact (Crane Park) (07/04/2020).
Mike Giles
Only a mile or so from home, but we had not discovered this wood until now! (07/04/2020)
Dick Blencowe
This is my daily walk, the Highcliffe Castle Zig Zag. The Needles on the IoW are in the distance and as can be seen not a lot of people!
Nick Ware
One of my favourite places is Winkworth Arboretum. I was first introduced to it as a seventeen year old photography student, a couple of years before joining the BBC. Towards the end of the Summer holidays I bumped into a fellow student in Bramley, nearby. I had been working as a junior hall porter during the hols at the Bramley Grange Hotel. The fellow student, Gillian, lived in Bramley, and said: “You should come swimming in the lake at Winkworth. Have you got a bike?”. Luckily I had…
So, a couple of days later we met up and cycled to Winkworth…
Jump forward to today:
Winkworth always has been, and still is still a regular walk for me, my lovely wife Judi and the dogs. Just them, and the Fortnum’s picnic hamper, and one couldn’t ask for more! It has endless appeal all year round….The picture below was taken last November, when the Autumn leaves are just beginning to fall.
Bernie Newnham
Same old walk down the canal, but improved by new sightings.
Alec Bray
Rather belatedly….Finally I have got out of the house (Sunday 19 April 2020), taking daughter Lucy’s little dog Chester for a walk in Pamber Forest.
Pamber Forest is not a “pretty” forest, but extends to Silchester (Calleva Atrebatum for the classicists) and is about 5 minutes walk from our front door.
You can see the start of the forest in this view of the footpath to get there – although you can only see six, there were seven donkeys and a couple of horses in the field. Now everything is quiet, we can hear the donkeys braying from our garden.
However, a mile in the other direction is Aldermaston Atomic Weapons Establishment (as in Aldermaston Marches)
Graeme Wall
For a change (Wednesday 22nd April 2020), a wander along the towpath by the Wey.
Tony Grant
A couple of nights ago (from 22nd April 2020), walk up the lane and look out over the fence.
John Nottage
Southwold Common looking and smelling very spring like (Wednesday 23rd April 2020).
Alec Bray
[Thursday 23rd April 2020] it was another walk with daughter Lucy’s dog Chester in Pamber Forest. but down a different path. I saw this tree, and thought I would try a 3-D image.
To view without a proper device, put a sheet of A4 paper at right angles to the screen, the short edge on the dividing line between the two images. Put your nose on the other short edge and so the left eye can only see the left image, the right eye the right image: You might have widen the eyes (opposite to crossing them)
[If you make the image too large it is unlikely to work.]
HINT – if it doesn’t work, try making the combined image a little bit smaller.
The images were taken with a normal phone camera, just moving the phone to the right (by a couple of feet, actually) and hoping that the lighting would remain the same!
Bernie Newnham
Stung into action – also I’m fed up with painting the house. I’ve found my Google Cardboard – a stereo viewer intended for smartphones. This one works, once you’ve crossed your eyes and focussed at infinity. I found that for close things you just need to move an eye-width. Sort of obvious really, but you live and learn.
Alec Bray
Once again we “borrowed” Lucy’s dog Chester to go for a walk (Wednesday 29th April 2020).
Within about 5 to 10 minutes drive there are Morgaston Woods, These are part of “The Vyne”, a National Trust property. The Vyne was originally built for Lord Sandys, Henry VIII’s Lord Chamberlain. It has been extended and reduced over the years.
A bit of Trivia: The Vyne holds an inscribed Roman ring as well as a lead tablet that speaks of a curse on the one who stole it. J. R. R. Tolkien was asked to comment on it as an expert on Anglo-Saxon history, including its connection to a mine fabled to have been dug by dwarves, and a few days after his visit he began writing “Lord of the Rings”.
Although The Vyne itself is closed due to the pandemic, Morgaston Woods are still open.
I tried to make a few “stereoscopic” pictures – not quite as successful as my previous tree (what a fluke that was!) but both of these give a better impression of the bluebells than the flat 2-D pictures. No science has been involved, just move the phone to the right and hope. A little bit trickier today, as Chester (on a lead – dogs on leads in these woods) was very keep to explore and was pulling me along a lot of the time.
Just made it home before it started to rain …
I hope that these will work for you!
Pat Heigham
The Vyne is a splendid house. I’ve recorded several concerts there.
Mike Giles
We have good countryside around us in Surrey and I attach two photos from a couple of days ago (sent 01/05/2020), when the sun was still with us,
Firstly, wild garlic in woods on the Norbury Park estate:
The cows are also in Norbury Park, beside the River Mole:
Dave Newbitt
I lived many years in Surrey and I certainly wouldn’t quarrel with the countryside there being good. Bit busy though! Wild garlic in flower is one of the really spectacular marker points of Spring and it’s just at its best about now.
Alec Bray
Wednesday 06 May 2020, and once again we looked after Lucy’s dog, Chester. For his walk, we slightly stretched the travel time to go Coombe Gibbet (Inkpen Beacon).. Coombe Gibbet is at the top of Gallows Down. The double gibbet was erected in 1676 for the purpose of gibbeting the bodies of George Broomham and Dorothy Newman and has only ever been used for them (the current version is a replica). The gibbet was placed in such a prominent location as a warning, to deter others from committing crimes. Walbury Hill (the highest point in South East England) is just a little further to the east.
Coombe Gibbet:
Looking North over the Kennet Valley: Hungerford is to the West and Newbury to the East. Beyond the fields in the middle distance is the River Kennet, Kennet Navigation (The Kennet and Avon Canal), the Holy Brook, the GWR main line to the West, the A4 Bath Road and the M4 motorway. There is actually a complete 180 degree view to the North.
Looking South towards Winchester:
… and of course, here is Chester:
(sorry for the framing (one handed use of digital SLR ))
Nick Ware
Just back from our walk in the woods. There’s still a carpet of Bluebells, though they are starting to fade and give way now to green Bracken.
The only snag is, we’re supposed to be in Menorca from today …but obviously couldn’t go. So here’s a glimpse of how, when we’re there, before walking to our favourite restaurant, we like to sit, Rioja in hand, watching the sun set over Fornels bay.
Alec Bray
We borrowed Chester today (Tuesday 12 May 2020). I took him to the Kennet and Avon Canal at Aldermaston.
The main Kennet and Avon Canal (here, the Kennet Navigation) is on the left: there is a short branch, on the right, which went to the GWR station at Aldermaston for load transshipments. The lock, rebuilt as the K&A was restored, was originally turf-sided and is one of the two locks on the K&A which has scalloped brick walls.
Further along:
Immediately behind that large horse chestnut tree is the GWR route to the West . just managed to catch a stone train going up to London (obviously I was not Alert! Note to self: Must Stay Alert!!) [Ed: new Government policy: Stay Alert]
and of course, there is Chester:
Oh, that is not a dead dog upside down and wearing a T-shirt just in front of Chester: it is just the pattern of reflection of the trees…
Chester is looking at the ducks on the opposite bank.
Mike Jordan
My only real memories of the Kennet and Avon was of spending long lunch hours in the pub at Kintbury – right on the canal – whilst doing the links midpoint on Walbury Hill as relay for Newbury Racecourse.
Oh it was a hard life in OBs.
The path to London was about the longest we did so some bright spark suggested we do some tests with a HUGE dish. Unfortunately it was so big and heavy it broke the panning head.
However a BBC waste bin wedged under got us out of trouble!
Graeme Wall
I did a trip up the Kennet and Avon from Reading to around Newbury back n the mid-1970s with Ian Stanyon and another camerman whose name I forget.
Geoff Fletcher
Dave Jorgensen and I used to travel the Kennet and Avon via roads. His home was in Bristol. We never thought it would be restored to navigation so rapidly given the challenge of the Devizes flight. We used to enjoy visiting the pumping station too, and Limpley Stoke.
[Ed: The main filming location for “The Titfield Thunderbolt” was a seven-mile stretch of line between Camerton and Limpley Stoke, not many miles south of Bath.]
Graeme Wall
Saw this as I was passing the Guildford hospital car park, not seen it before.
A new take on Bridge Rail…
Alec Bray
Chester’s walk today (Tuesday 19th May) was along the Thames at Goring and Streatley.
First off, we went to the church at Streatley (on the (West) Berkshire side of the River Thames.
The Blue Plaque states that Lewis Carroll (“Alice in Wonderland“) preached here in 1864.- he would have been 32 years old at the time.
Then over the Thames on the bridge – which is actually part of the Ridgway.
The Hotel on the left is “The Swan”: during the 1970s, it was owned by the drag artist Danny La Rue.
The walk continued across the bridge to Goring Lock. Goring is in Oxfordshire – it was overall Regional Winner of the Village of the Year regional heat for South England in 2009-201 and a finalist in the small towns category of the Britain in Bloom contest in 2019.
The trouble with this stretch of the Thames is that there is a picture at every step of the way! I could take a whole heap of pictures….
The colours of the trees were wonderful – you can’t really see the red leaves and other colours on this small-sized shot (and anyway it was essentially “contre jour” as the tow path is on the North (Oxfordshire) side of the Thames at this point!):
…But must include Chester!
… who, as usual, is fascinated by the water birds …
…and somewhere behind us there is George Michael’s house (George Michael was found dead there on 26 December 2016):
In the summer of 1893, Oscar Wilde stayed at Ferry House in Goring with Lord Alfred Douglas. There, Wilde began writing his play “An Ideal Husband”, which includes a major character named Lord Goring.
Sir Arthur Harris, the wartime leader of RAF Bomber Command (Bomber Harris), lived in an enlarged Ferry Cottage from 1953 until his death in 1984.
