Test Way #10: Finally The Test Way delivers!

Well, yes, we took the 13.5m option and we were very glad we did. It was a long walk but the scenery and the variety on this section made it a real pleasure and not in any way a chore. The time seemed to pass by very quickly and the walk didn't drag out like the final section of leg 2 had.

We met in the same pub car park where we finished leg 2 and set off for St Mary Bourne. By the time we arrived five hours later we'd seen watermeadows, villages, farmland, forest and downland. We'd walked on a busy road, another dismantled railway line, through overgrown woodland tracks, cutways between houses and fields.

This was definitely the standout section of the walk so far. It delivered exactly what Miche and I had hoped to get out of The Test Way, and what I think my dad was hoping for too.

One of the things that has really struck me about this section of the walk is how remote sections of it felt. At one point we seemed deep in woodland and at another we skirted around some farmland and within minutes found ourselves walking across rolling downland. It was all very attractive on the eye but, most pleasingly, through big sections of this walk we didn't see anyone else at all. We were in deepest, darkest Hampshire, that was for sure.

Well... yes it was deep, but it certainly wasn't dark. In fact this was the type of enlightening experience I hoped for when I started this blog. In my first post I talked about walking The Test Way to discover not only my local area but "the world immediately beyond it", and I really feel like I'm starting to achieve this now. These parts of Hampshire are areas that you cannot really discover by road - yes, you can visit Longparish and Stockbridge and Wherwell and St Mary Bourne, but you don't really "see" them by car. Walking a footpath like this helps you really discover them, gets you under the skin a little bit, and shows you how the whole community links together.

I guess it shows you the facade of this string of villages (that drivers see) but also the bits in between because, when you think about it, they weren't always linked by tarmac roads which you tear along at 40 or 50 miles an hour in your family hatchback - they were once linked only by these footpaths and some tracks. A couple of hundred years ago no one would have been able to pass this countryside by without "seeing" it, but these days we drive so fast that we have no choice but to keep our eyes on the road.

So I guess to that extent we've started to achieve our aim - seeing the world that's around us, the world we usually miss because it's hidden away in our peripheral vision, not even registering as we try to make sure our vehicles stay on the road.

Test Way #9: Photo slideshow on Flickr

I've now placed a selection of pictures from the first two legs onto Flickr.

Click on the links below for more:

Test Way Leg 1
Test Way Leg 2

Test Way #8: Planning and logistical issues!

E-mail, 11 August 2009, in preparation for me, my wife (Miche) and dad undertaking the third leg of The Test Way this coming weekend.

Dad,

It's going to be a bit of a long haul on Sunday I think, and we need to consider the best way to do it. Essentially there are is 24.5 miles still to do but you can't easily break it down into two easily manageable chunks. We either need to 13.5m this Sunday followed by the final 11 miles next time, or 8m this Sunday followed by 16.5 (not the desired option as far as I can see!).

The slight concern is that 13.5 is much longer than the section between Romsey and Stockbridge which came in at 10.5m and was knackering enough! Having said that we don't really want to do the remainder in three sections because each would be too short.

The way perhaps to break it up is to meet Jenny and the girls for lunch in Longparish (The Plough Inn), at which point we will have completed 8.5m, then do the remaining 5m (to St Mary Bourne) after lunch. Do you think this is going to work? Not sure having lunch in the middle is a good idea, but 13.5m is a long stretch and probably needs to be broken up.

Downside is that it breaks up Jenny's day and makes it difficult for her to plan what to do with the kids. Let me know what you think.

The other issue I've thought of is how we get back to Stockbridge. With the girls in the car with Jenny we might get two of the three of us in too, but not sure what to do with the odd one! We will need to do two trips back to Stockbridge I think, unless you or Jenny waits at St Mary Bourne whilst the other drives us all back to Stockbridge, before returning and heading home.

Let me know what you think on this too.

Charlie

Test Way #7 - Time passing by

Well it's certainly taking longer than expected to complete this walk.

First leg - Eling to Romsey - 27 October 2008
Second leg - Romsey to Stockbridge - 10 March 2009

And now we finally seem to be about to do the third leg. This Sunday coming will be 16 August and almost 10 months since we started. And then, of course, there was the aborted start back in September last year.

Let's hope we complete the fourth and final leg before the anniversary of leg 1. There's so many other walks to do!

Test Way #6 - Monarchs, Mottisfont and old branch lines

Stage 2 of The Test Way threw up a couple of interesting talking points, as I've already said.

The old railway line we walked on, closed by Dr Beeching in the sixties, may not have had any tracks on it but it certainly boasted a station. Horsebridge station stuck out like a sore thumb ahead of us, being in good decorative order and boasting a signal box, platforms either side of the track and the main station building. According to Wikipedia this was used during WWII as a staging post to transport men and equipment from Salisbury Plain to Southampton for transfer to the front line in France. It is now a wedding venue and holiday accomodation.

It's a bit surreal to see the station ahead of you as you walk along the track, a little like being transported back in time because it's so well restored. If the footpath didn't deviate around the station to the left, rather than continuing on through the station, you really could imagine being back in the late 1800s approaching a bustling local station. Of course, Dr Beeching didn't feel that it was bustling at all when, in 1964 (1 year short of it's 100th anniversary), he closed the line down for passengers and, other than the occasional freight train, nobody experienced pulling into Horsebridge again.

Another point of interest on this stage of the walk was the walk around Mottisfont. At this point you pass Mottisfont Abbey, walking across flatlands around to the north of the village, a place where we like to go several times a year. Owned by the National Trust, it has peaceful lawns and an equally tranquil riverbank walk, a treasure-trove of a house and a maze-like rose garden. In the summer, you can watch plays and concerts in the grounds, a really fantastic (not to mention earie) experience.

As you pass the Abbey on your right, you get a different perspective to the one you get as a visitor to the property, but it's no less interesting and inviting. Really worth a visit for walkers on this route, particularly as it has a nice coffee shop! It's a great place to visit with the kids, and is probably the main reason why we have National Trust membership.

Finally, I want to mention other walks that intersect with The Test Way. We knew from our book that The Clarendon Way, which goes from Salisbury to Winchester, crossed our walk during the Romsey-Stockbridge section. However we started to see referenced to The Monarch's Way, a walk we'd not heard of before. Then attached to one of the waymarkers was a short incription saying that this was a 600+ mile route that retraces the steps of Charles II as he retreated from the battle of Worcester. As my dad lives near Worcester, this was interested because it suggested he could follow these waymarks all the way home!

Once we'd got home and recovered, I looked a bit further into The Monarch's Way. It transpires that the king travelled the route, which actually snakes north from Worcester, then south and along the south coast, over a period of six weeks and was hotly pursued by Parliamentary forces for most of the way.

At the point where it merges with The Test Way (for a couple of miles between Kimbridge and Horsebridge), Charles would have been heading east from Devon towards Brighton and eventually Shoreham. It's fair to say his route was anything but direct.

The walk also has a Wikipedia entry, which along with the Monarch's Trail Association site (linked above) tells you everything you need to know.

Stage 2 of The Test Way, despite the stodginess underfoot, has proven to be diverse and interesting in so many ways. Whatever else you could say about The Test Way, it's certainly been educational!

Test Way #5 - Public transport issues and a varied terrain

The second part of The Test Way, from Romsey to Stockbridge, took us quite a while to get around to. Matching diaries with my wife and my dad was not easy! However last Tuesday (10 March) we finally got around to it.

We walked through some very nice countryside and made some interesting discoveries but before we even got to the start of the walk there was a logistical issue that vexed us for a short time. We had originally tried to organise the walk for a Sunday and planned to use public transport to get back from Stockbridge to Romsey, where we would leave the car. However after searching on the internet and eventually using the good old-fashioned telephone to ring Tourist Information in Andover it transpired that there are very few buses that go anywhere near Stockbridge! Those that do only go to Winchester. The service is the same on a weekday, just a little more frequent.

The choice was a convoluted combination of bus and trains to get back to the car in Romsey, or just a slightly less convoluted system of leaving cars in various places.

So at 9.45 on Tuesday morning we drove to Stockbridge and met my dad, left his car there and drove back to Romsey and started the walk.

On the plus side the weather was perfect - a bit overcast but mild and bright which is textbook walking weather. My textbook anyway! And when we got going, walking from Sadler's Mill in Romsey where salmon leap through the mill currents in their grand journey back up The Test, up into the countryside and woodland that skirts the northwest side of Romsey, the freshness of the air and the liberty you feel when surrounded by nothing apart from the big wide world, was invigorating. The BlackBerry and mobile where off, all we had in our pockets were apples and chocolate bars, and all we had in our rucksacks were waterproofs, maps and a camera.

Perhaps, though, I'm never going to be a natural walker because there was a downside to all this - underfoot there was a nightmare world of squelchy boggy goo. From the flats at the start of the walk on the way to Squabb Wood, to the sheltered woodland around Awbridge, the path was rarely easy. The problem with this isn't so much that I'm adverse to these conditions, but that it takes away the opportunity to look, see and marvel at what might be around me. At the end of the walk, as we staggered into Stockbridge thoroughly knackered 13 miles later, I wasn't too sure what I'd seen, although conversely I was absolutely certain we'd been through some really very nice countryside.

With the benefit of hundsight I know it was certainly a walk of varied terrain. We had flood plains just out of Romsey (with a nice view of Romsey Abbey - see picture), ancient woodlands, a vineyard (see second picture)and pig-farming country. At one point a sow came running in our direction, seemingly unaware of the low electric fence that seperated it from us. We waited, baited breath, for the great beast to recoil with a shock but she must have been toying with us because she reared up just short of it, much to our relief/disappointment (delete as applicable!). And then we walked through villages, across the National Trust estate of Mottisfont Abbey (one of our favourite places to visit) and along the old Romsey-Stockbridge railway line that Dr Beeching kindly turned into a footpath many years ago.

My Test Way book commented that walking on old railway lines is not to everyone's taste, and I can see what the author meant. For whilst it is very flat and straight, meaning that we had the chance to look around properly for the first time on the walk, there is a also a lack of challenge to it.

But I think that, having squelched our way through the first few miles, it was something of a relief.

I definately felt that, by the time I arrived at The White Hart Inn at Stockbridge for lunch, I had been well exercised and, if I had had any doubts, then the stiffness of my legs the next day proved would have categorically proved them wrong.

It's worth reflecting on a couple of other features of the walk. The old railway station that has been converted into holiday cottages and the other footpaths we crossed - The Monarch's Trail and The Clarendon Way - certainly offered interesting talking points. I will post seperately on these.

However to finish it is worth mentioning that, unlike the first stage of the walk, this one follows the river much more closely. Fishing rights along The Test mean that you'll never be able to walk along the banks for the full distance, and as such the path deviates away from the river on many occasions. But with this stage you see much more of it, and the world that operates in its midst.

Test Way #4: A shaky start!

Well, today, we finally managed to knock off the first section of the Test Way. It's more than a month since our failed first attempt but at last it's done.

We parked the car at Eling Tide Mill (pictured left) and walked through Totton to the Salmon Leap pub, then all the way across the aforementioned nature reserve, through farmland where we encountered a fierce hailstorm, to Romsey and a very nice lunch.

Perhaps I should leave it there? If I go on, I may put you off walking the Test Way, as (to be brutally honest) it isn't - so far - the most picturesque walk I've ever done!

Yes, there's the nature reserve, but the fact that it was flooded in parts made us take our eyes of the nature to keep concentrating on whether we were about to step off the boardwalk and into a foot of water! And yes, the section between the motorway and Romsey, where we encountered seemingly hundreds of hares running amock on a ploughed field, aswell as a dog that managed to slip its leash and spend ten minutes non-stop chasing them around, is much nicer to look at than the stretch between the nature reserve and the M27. But I will be disappointed if the next 35 miles of the Test Way is as vaguely related to the River Test as the first nine - we hardly saw it at all!!

Anyway, I should mention the challenging bits of this walk. In parts it could only be described as "squelchy", and is probably better attempted in the dryer months. But that is what hardy walking boots are made for, and we didn't really mind at all - it just made it hard going.

We also had to contend with an apparently unpassable break in the nature reserve's boardwalk, through which we could only navigate by climbing onto a gate which someone else then pushed open, allowing us to shimmy along to it and jump across to where the boardwalk restarted! It was certainly an adventure and a couple of our number did seem to suggest going back - but we were hearing none of it!

At another point, the path was unpassable without getting a severe "booty" - a stretch of about 200 yards was completely underwater - so three of us decided to take off shoes and socks and paddle through the water (see picture)! It was painfully chilly, or so my wife reported as I gleefully got through it with only lightly damp socks and boots.

All of this made the walk quite difficult work, but when we got onto Broadlands estate the scenery changed and, apart from 10 minutes hiding under an umbrella-shaped tree during a hailstorm, the sun came out and the whole experience was very pleasant.

And shortly after getting a glimpse of Broadlands House (see photo) through the trees we emerged onto the main road into Romsey, and caught sight of The Cromwell Arms, marking the end of our walk for the day. After lunch we left the Test Way and strolled on into Romsey, catching a train back to Totton and home.

We intend to carry on with the Romsey-Stockbridge stretch in the next month or two, but I can only hope that the overall quality improves... both under foot and in terms of the scenery. With Squabb Wood, Mottisfont and more of the river on offer, I'm sure that it will.