Stage 4 reality check

Of course, there's plenty of time for it to change between now and then...

The real purpose of this post is to tell you that I've been thinking deeply over the way I've broken up the route. In most cases, I've included walks to/from the cars, a couple of stages are 10 miles of Ridgeway and the final stage is only 4.5 miles. In a Spockian moment I realised this was on the daft side of logical; 8 miles is a comfortable walk so 87 miles of path could be broken down into 11 more-or-less 8 miles stretches. And we've been finding that it's not all that difficult to park much closer to (and in some cases at) the start and end of the Ridgeway section rather than walking extra mileage to and from the cars. So I spent some time with my trusty piece of string and an OS Explorer map (171 if you must know).

Stage 3 is fine as it is. We can park at the start, and I'm fairly certain we can park at the end, and it's already an 8 mile section of Ridgeway. No, it's Stage 4 that's been worrying me; 10 miles of Ridgeway, and from what information I can find the pub at the end is now more of a trendy bistro-type restaurant than a drinking establishment for weary travellers. Don't get me wrong, I'm as fond of eating in trendy bistro-type restaurants as the next foodie, but it's not really appropriate to the circumstances. So the logical thing to do is cut a couple of miles off the planned walk and then (having parked at least one car at walk's end) drive to a nearby pub-type pub. Instead of walking all the way to Nuffield Common, I'm proposing we walk as far as the entrance to Swyncombe House (grid ref SU 683 904) and then go find a drink, probably in the Five Horseshoes in Maidensgrove.

So when we're all settled with a drink after Stage 3, I'll put this proposal to the rest of the crew and see what they think about it. If they agree, I'll update the plan and have a look at the next stage while I'm at it.