15 July 2016 OS
maps 174 Newbury & Wantage, 175 Reading
& Windsor
All day
We started from
the car park in the centre of Goring, just off the High Street. The passage to the High Street passes between
a colourful garden of mixed flowers and vegetables and a verge by the village
hall, where a seed mix for "wildlife" has been introduced behind
fragrant vines of sweet pea camouflaging the wire fence. Plants noticed in the verge and along the
passage included pellitory-of-the-wall Parietaria
judaica, wall barley Hordeum murinum,
yellow corydalis Pseudofumaria lutea,
cultivated flax Linum usatissimum,
buckwheat Fagopyrum esculentum, borage
Borago officinalis, common fumitory Fumaria officinalis, and phacelia Phacelia tanacetifolia.
Cultivated flax
|
Buckwheat
|
We descended the
High Street to the River Thames, where we joined the Thames Path south along
the east bank, passing over a roaring side-stream channelled under Goring
Mill. In the main river the most noticeable
plant was yellow water-lily Nuphar lutea,
with large oval leaves.
Yellow water-lily
On the shored
banks grew vervain Verbena officinalis,
a plant we would see frequently later on beside country lanes.
Vervain by the Thames
The usual birds
were present - greylag geese, coot, mallards, heron and mute swan.
Greylag geese
Where the banks
became natural, there were the native (white-flowered) form of comfrey Symphytum officinale, purple loosestrife
Lythrum salicaria, gypsywort Lycopus europaeus, wild angelica Angelica sylvestris, water figwort Scrophularia aquatica, valerian Valeriana officinalis, wood horsetail Equisetum sylvaticum, Indian balsam Impatiens glandulifera, tufted vetch Vicia cracca, yellow loosestrife Lysimachia vulgaris, marsh ragwort Senecio aquaticus, great willowherb Epilobium hirsutum, and hemp agrimony Eupatorium cannabinum. The last had the leaf-mines of the fly Liriomyza eupatorii. Much of the vegetation was smothered by large
bindweed Calystegia sepium and
cleavers Galium aparine scrambling
over it, but despite searching assiduously through many large clumps of nettles
Urtica dioica, we could not find any
greater dodder Cuscuta europaea,
which formerly grew along here. Banded
demoiselles Calopteryx splendens were
flying among this vegetation.
Marsh ragwort
|
Banded demoiselle female
|
Liriomyza
eupatorii
mine in hemp-agrimony leaf
Some large trees
overhung the path to reach the light over the river, including ash Fraxinus excelsior, small-leaved lime Tilia cordata and white willow Salix alba.
White willow over Thames
Path
After the wooded
path we came to more open grassland. Opposite
Lower Basildon the path went further away from
the river, passing through a small reserve called Little Meadow, which was long
grass with meadow cranesbill Geranium
pratense, more comfrey (this time including purple-flowered plants as well
as white), meadowsweet Filipendula
ulmaria, musk mallow Malva moschata,
and lady's bedstraw Galium verum. Back at the riverbank we came across hemlock
water-dropwort Oenanthe crocata. A very ugly railway bridge passed over the
river, high above our heads, where the only fern on the brickwork was wall-rue Asplenium ruta-muraria.
The path continued
somewhat back from the river (an angling group had bought up the rights of
access), with black horehound Ballota
nigra most notable in the hedgerows, although a few pyramidal orchids Anacamptis pyramidalis occurred as the
river cut through the chalk hills and we were then in beechwood (Hartslock
Wood). We searched here for lesser hairy
brome Bromopsis benekenii (now
reduced to a subspecies of hairy brome Bromopsis
ramosa), but to no avail, as we could not find the intermediate
flower-heads between drooping panicles (hairy brome and giant fescue Festuca gigantea) and unbranched spikes
(false-brome Brachypodium sylvaticum
and wood barley Hordeum europaeum). The wood, indeed, had few ancient woodland
indicator species (wood barley, hartstongue fern Asplenium scolopendrium, wood melick Melica uniflora, yew Taxus
baccata) and was disappointing. Other
species here were ploughman's spikenard Inula
conyza (with the mines of the fly Chromatomyia
syngenesiae), greater celandine Chelidonium
majus, butcher's broom Ruscus
aculeatus and the rooting-shank fungus Xerula
radicata.
Chromatomyia
syngenesiae
mines in ploughman's spikenard
Eventually the
path climbed to the top of the hill, well away from the river, and crossed the
plateau at the top past uninteresting fields. We eventually dropped down into Whitchurch,
via its main street, to the Thames once again,
which we crossed into Pangbourne on the other side.
The churchyard
here had green alkanet Pentaglottis
sempervirens. Both Whitchurch and
Pangbourne have pubs and cafés for lunch at this stage, but we decided to
strike on through Pangbourne to Upper Basildon
before stopping, as this would put the least interesting stretch along roads
behind us. As we climbed the hill out of
Pangbourne there was a walkway beside the road, but this finished when houses
ended, and from there on we had to endure frequent traffic close at hand. Towards the top of the hill we passed through
a stretch of chalk, so that road verge flowers included greater knapweed Centaurea scabiosa, crow garlic Allium vineale, and scented orchids Gymnadenia conopsea (just gone
over). We entered the long stretched-out
village of Upper Basildon
We walked on to
the Red Lion pub, which we reached by 1.45pm, in time to have a long rest over
beer and good food with friendly service.
On the corner of
the road outside the pub was a bank of creeping comfrey Symphytum grandiflorum, Druce's cranesbill Geranium x oxonianum and an unusual "double" flore pleno form of greater celandine we
had never seen before.
Double-flowered form of
greater celandine
As we walked
north, lane-sides also had tutsan Hypericum
androsaemum and rose of Sharon H.
calycinum, while we also came across a white-flowered herb robert Geranium robertianum, which lacked any
of the red pigments usually so evident on this species and had very hairy
fruits. It would have corresponded to subspecies
celticum (South
Wales coast!) except that the anthers were yellow and not red or
purple (orange in the usual form), so this was presumably an "albino"
variety entirely lacking anthocyanins.
White form of herb robert
We picked up the
bridleway beside Saddlehill and Park Woods to continue north away from traffic,
but as usual it was often uncomfortable walking where the ground had been
broken up and puddled by horses, while the flora was very uninteresting, with a
little small balsam Impatiens parviflora
and ramsons Allium ursinum. After a mile we reached another lane and had
to backtrack south a little to pick up a further bridleway continuing north
through Harley Hill Wood, which proved even damper and more difficult. The only relief was when we left woodland and
were approaching Hillfields Farm, where a track-side bank was rich in pyramidal
orchids, including quite a few white forms.
Other chalk grassland plants here were rest-harrow Ononis repens, and harebell Campanula
rotundifolia. Near the farm a
footpath went off SW to avoid having to run into the A329, but this was very
unkempt and overgrown and even less hospitable than the bridleway! It eventually emerged from woodland into a
field which had more chalk grassland flora - fairy flax Linum catharticum, yellowwort Blackstonia
perfoliatum, common centaury Centaurium
erythraea (with plenty of white as well as pink flowers), wood spurge Euphorbia amygdaloides, wild basil Clinopodium vulgare, eyebright Euphrasia nemoralis, and rock-rose Helianthemum nummularium. Many marbled white butterflies flew up as we
crossed recently cut hay, although they were reluctant to fly with a persistent
drizzle and grey skies. It was actually
with some relief that we came out into a country lane and we could avoid
ploughing through more tall wet vegetation.
This lane took us north again to Grove Farm. In the hedgebank at one point, past lots of
vervain and some dark mullein Verbascum
nigrum, we came across a single small clump of wild catsmint Nepeta cataria, which is getting
increasingly scarce these days and which we never find at sites where it was
previously recorded but have to rely on happy chance encounters such as this.
Wild catmint
From Grove Farm we
took a winding lane west to the line of Grim's Ditch above Streatley. On the way we logged hedgerow cranesbill Geranium pyrenaicum and pale toadflax Linaria repens; along all the roads we had
also seen spiked and grey sedges Carex
spicata and C. divulsa. A bridleway went east alongside the Ditch and
eventually along it and descended to the A329 just outside Streatley. There was a pavement alongside, so we took
the road into the village, which lies directly across the Thames
from Goring, as Pangbourne does from Whitchurch. Turning east towards the river we saw the
church, which looked interesting and ornate, and went down a side passage to
take a closer look. It was built in the
C13th, the tower in the 15th, and the odd turret staircase added to the tower
in the mid-C16th.
At the base of a
wall we saw escaped garden lobelia Lobelia
erinus.
Garden lobelia
As we crossed the
bridge over the Thames we looked down to see
marsh woundwort Stachys palustris to
add to our list of riverside plants for the day, but we were less impressed by
the group of plants on a corner of the bank at the Goring side: a large colony
of Indian balsam and Gunnera tinctoria.
Indian balsam and Gunnera
As we ascended
Goring High Street there was a fine view of the parish church
of St Thomas of Canterbury
At the hotel
called The Miller of Mansfield we drank a restful coffee while waiting for an
evening meal that was very special and made up for some of the downsides of the
day. This hotel is an C18th coaching inn
named after the rhyming play The King and
the Miller of Mansfield by Robert Dodsley, first performed in London
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