This trail was very different from our last one. For starters, we are now at the Thames Valley in the historic County of Berkshire in South East England, although part of Oxfordshire since 1974. No beaches here but the lovely countryside and beautiful woodland. This walk was also shorter – 5 kilometres.
| Distance | Total Time | Difficulty |
| 5.06 km | 01:45 | Moderate |
The Wittenham Clumps are part of the Earth Trust. The trust’s vision “is a society where accessible, engaging green spaces enable nature and people to thrive in balance”. Check the post notes at the bottom of the page for links to their website, as well as maps and the full details table.
You can take a few different routes from the car park (Postcode: OX14 4QZ), from a short walk to Round Hill offering excellent views of the area to circular walks around the Clumps. There is also an official Earth Trust route called River of Life, which will take you along the River Thames, ponds, fields, and meadows.
The Hike
Now the walk. We started our hike at the car park. The space in the car park is quite small, but overflow parking is available at the Earth Trust Centre 400 meters from there.
We walked sections of the River of Life trail, a little off track through pretty woods and back to the Clumps. The route is straightforward, and we would rate the difficulty as easy if it wasn’t for our little detour into the woods.
The gang also walked the 10km River of Life Trail in the Wittenham Clumps. Check it out.
There were two red rubbish bins, one after the gate in the car park and one at the Magical Meadows gate. If you are not from the UK, you might not know that the red bins are exclusively for dog’s poops 🙂
Straight after passing the gate from the car park, there is another little gate to the left marked with a small pole where the River of Life route starts. Trees and fences protect this section, making it a corridor and an easy and fresh walk. At this time of the year, the vegetation has just started to change to autumn colours, and it looks great.
At the end of this section, a little gate separates it from the woods. The sign at the gate says “Please avoid accessing the woods in windy conditions”. This is due to the trees in the area being old, and there is a risk of trees falling or shedding branches. Please keep this in mind.
After this stretch, we got to the Magical Meadows area, and the landscape opened.
Here is where we diverged from the River of Life route and followed the riverbank, not that we could see the river. We just followed the vegetation until we could get into the woods, where we saw some basic structures that looked like bushcraft shelters, maybe from boy or girl scout training, I don’t really know. Also, there were plenty of people walking their dogs, most of them off leash.
The Clumps are popular with families with small children and cows are often grazing there, so please be mindful when letting your dog off leash. I found the woods were a better location for the dogs to run freely.
We stopped by a little pond. From there, we got lost in the woods for a short stretch before re-joining the path.
If you decide to follow our trail into the woods, please remember that there are fallen trees, and we had to lift our dogs over one of those. At this point, we moved back towards Castle Hill, circulated Round Hill and went back to the car park.
It was a great little walk, and the girls seemed to have enjoyed it as much as we did.
Cheers,
Ademar
Full Details Table
| Location | Little Wittenham, Wittenham Clumps |
| Parking Postcode | OX14 4QZ |
| Parking Cost | Free |
| Starting Point | Wittenham Clumps car park |
| End Point | Wittenham Clumps car park |
| Total Time | 01:45 |
| Difficulty | Moderate |
| Distance | 5.06 km |
| Elevation | 46 m – 123 m |
| Facilities | – Information Centre 400 m from the car park – Waste bins at car park and Magical Meadows entrance |
| Dog friendly rating | 4 stars |
| Points of Interest | – Round Hill – Castle Hill – Magical Meadows / Church Meadows |
Maps
Leave a Reply