St Swithuns Way - Day 1

Winchester to Alton
Distance: 22 miles
Ascent: 600m
Weather: mostly sunny,  brief shower
Two deer (I saw two, Rob saw one and heard one), fox, more fast fish, an interesting beetle, squirrels, hare, no bunnies,  pigs, nosy cows, kestrel, buzzards.
Horrible big Chinese dragon/lion things: 4

After posting yesterday's blog, we went out on the town. We borrowed a cute union jack umbrella and visited the cathedral, with rainbow adornment, and then had a pint in the Royal Oak, which claims to be the oldest pub in England but frankly we didn't see much evidence of this. The beer was good though.

We had waffles for breakfast.

St Swithun's Way leads eastwards out of Winchester by the River Itchen, along with numerous other footpaths, and may have given me slightly higher expectations of the footpath's condition than could be sustained throughout the day.

The day started through the Itchen Valley nature reserve, which is beautiful and we saw many critters, and met a chap who was photographing beetles.

The St Swithuns Way goes much the same way as the Itchen Way (which with hindsight is probably a nicer walk), the King's Way, The Three Castles Way and the Oxdrove Way.

There are lots of big posh houses along here and we were able to have a good look into their back gardens.  Or grounds, which might be a better expression.

We have seen quite a few bonfires recently and there was an especially large one this morning,  turning the sky an interesting orangey brown colour, and we joked that it was appropriate to light pyres on an saint's pilgrimage route. Turns out the village was called Martyr Worthy.

We were met (a couple of times)  by Dad and Diane, with their dogs Holly and Ben, outside Ovington and we walked a little then stopped for a pub lunch at The Bush. After a lovely hour of good food and catching up,  we continued on.

The route of the trail now became less well signed, more overgrown and the stiles in often distinctly dilapidated conditions. From Teg's Down Road to Park Lane above New Barn, the Way disappeared completely in a rapeseed oil field,  and we followed cut path which thankfully came out at a stile at the other side. We saw a fox along here, and later another deer also emerged from a similar field.

Quite a lot of the way is along track lanes and by the side of minor roads, but there were also some very nice bits through Old Down Wood and New Copse, where we stopped for some tea (fancy green tea), leftover pork pie from lunch, and biscuits, in amongst a carpet of bluebells,  stitchwort, cuckooflower and dead nettles.

Then we followed the disused railway line into Chawton, where we passed Jane Austen's house and museum (shut by this time), and then used the Jane Austin underpass, into Alton. We are staying at The Swan, which is very comfortable and does a nice pint of Hogs Back T.E.A.