54km February Magic
A field of Winter Aconites at The Welford Park Snowdrop Festival
It’s magic time
No matter how bad the weather, no matter how hard the ride, a bank of snowdrops lightens the mood. The Roman who first brought a bunch to England must have thought so too as he carried a bunch of carefully wrapped bulbs from the warmth of bulb’s native Mediterranean woods and hills. Once planted here, they spread quietly across the woods and fields. Monks planted them in abbeys as a sign of purification and hope, cottagers to remind them of the mid-way point between the winter solstice and the spring equinox. The church put them in graveyards to symbolise death. Today, a chemical derivative, galanthomine, is made in labs, and used as a drug to relieve Alzheimers.
Ride practicalities
START/FINISH: ~Newbury DISTANCE: 54km TOTAL ASCENT: 549m TERRAIN AND SURFACES: Roads throughout other than the last four km which are on a well surfaced canal path MAINLINE TRAIN SERVICES: Newbury LINKS TO OTHER RIDES: RECOMMENDED FOOD AND DRINK; Welford Park (only in the snowdrop season Feb-March), Kintbury; The Dundas Arms, Newbury, The Tiny Cafe (good light lunches, coffee and best of all the goulash which is served on Fri-Sun)
The Ride
Take the road out of Newbury, towards Enborne and Hamstead Marshall. The thin, grey outline of the Berkshire Downs are just visible in the morning mist and the air is clean and crisp, drawing drops from your nose. The quiet lane ambles around fields of tea-green grass and twists unhurriedly though copses, whose leafless trees arch across the road. Clumps of snowdrops are scattered along the way.
Behind the estate wall which follows the road, Hamstead Park has barely changed from the days when it was a Royal deer park; in its time it has belonged to the Earl Marshall of England and Elizabeth I. It’s three mottes and medieval fish pond still exist, as do many features of its original layout, due it is said, to the house being burnt down in 1718 and never replaced. The owners at the time, the Cravens, moved to another of their houses at nearby Benham and never bothered to ‘update’ the grounds with the new farming methods of the 18th century’s agricultural revolution.
Galanthus nivalis
Follow the road towards Inkpen, where the countryside becomes the embodiment of the landscape painting of Eric Ravilious or John Nash; a mystical rolling downland of English chalk, whose pale-green hills undulate under cinereous skies.
The route passes through the village of Inkpen. Every architectural feature that you’d expect from a southern English village is present; a red telephone box (in a new guise as a book-swap centre), a red post box and thatched cottages around a village green which at this time of year is covered in snowdrops. However, the pub and the village shop are no more, so continue on towards Hungerford.
Riding through the tightly clipped hedges of Royal Berkshire
Taking the country roads whose hedges have been very neatly trimmed - this is Royal Berkshire after all - you rattle over a cattle grid, and ride over the Hungerford Commons which have been ‘commons’ for over seven hundred years. The road is lined with limes through which medieval strip lynchets can be seen in the low winter light. The town is built on a crossing point of the river Kennet and the intersection of two major roads, which makes the high streets unpleasantly busy. However, the ride to the bridge and over the roundabout is short and soon you are back on tranquil lanes, leaving the vehicles to their fume-y stop-starts.
As you climb up to the old Roman road of Ermine Street and over its modern equivalent, the M4, you can’t help but notice that the verges are lined with the ‘Candelmas Bells’ as snowdrops were once known. They push through the hedges and spread across the woods. It is beautiful riding; the bare trees, the thin blue of the sky, and the red kites pirouetting above you. This is racecourse country too - and the spindly legged horses are nose to grass in the fields, looking powerful and magnificent.
The road follows the river Lambourne to Welford Park, where the winter-brown earth has been turned a sea of foaming white. Stop. Park the bike by the entry kiosk. Pay the small entry fee. Walk on the soft ground in your cleats. For all our science and technology, we are still simple beings and there, at the end of winter, is a reminder that the world is still turning, that the earth’s incomprehensible forces are still working. The delight of this white carpet of fragility, even for those who profess no love of flowers, is tangible. These tiny flowers are mood changing. Everyone walking around the park is smiling. It is contagious. And snowdops apart, the lunches are good, and the cakes alone are definitely worth stopping for.
The Tiny Cafe - where good goulash is served Fri-Sun
From Welford Park, you climb out of the valley and back to the Roman road. Crowning the hills at Wickham, is the church tower which is at least 900 years old. Until the Dissolution of the Monasteries, the village lands were held from Abingdon Abbey near Oxford, and rent included forty pounds of bees wax a year.
On serpentine lanes, the route re-crosses the Kennet and passes through Kintbury, another quintessential southern English village, where homes of agricultural workers are now ‘desirable commuter residences’; smart, and newly painted with modern kitchens inside, trampolines on the back lawn and over-sized cars parked on the hard paving outside the front door.
Along the route to Newbury, there are crowds of snowdrops on banks, in woods and hiding under hedges. The last few kilometres are ridden beside the Kennet and Avon canal on a good towpath. Even here, there are those joyous white bells, nodding in the breeze. And as you return to the bustle of a market town, your winter mood will have been lifted by the hints of spring.
Every route on this website has been carefully researched as well as ridden. However situations on the ground can change quickly. If you know of changes to this route, or cafes, pubs and the like which you think other cyclists need to know about, feel free to share your thoughts below.
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