Walking Near Combe, West Berkshire

 Walking Near Combe, West  Berkshire

 

 

The highest point in Southern England (an area of fluid definition) is at, or vey near, Walbury Hill in West Berkshire, on the edge of that region of the Downs facing the Kennet Valley (in modern parlance, the M4 valley).

 

Walbury has an iron age hill fort or settlement, a relatively unremarkable feature in the Downs. But nearby are two more modern items. One is a replica gibbet (“The Combe Gibbet”), upon whose gruesome predecessor were displayed the bodies of C17 murderers.

The other is a memorial to a WW2 parachute battalion.

 

On Walbury Hill the soldiers had practised their D-Day (June 1944) assault on a German gun battery at Merville, Normandy. Meticulous planning and preparation were both dissipated in the fog of war. Of 600 men, only 150 made it into battle, the rest landing too far from the target, unable to identify the drop zone markers of the advance party. 

 

Although the battery was briefly captured by the small remainder, they could not hold it, and destroyed only 2 of 4 long range guns. The Germans recaptured the battery and held it for a further 2 ½ months, until the eventual allied breakout from Normandy.

 

The story is a miniature of the daring, improvisation, chaos and local failure that was D-Day.

 

On the reverse of the Walbury escarpment lies a steep valley. At the bottom of this valley is the hamlet of Combe.

 

Combe was once a coherent village, with a village’s amenities. These days, it has no amenities apart from the pretty Norman church of St Swithun's (not doing very well at present in his patronage of rain) and a manor available for wedding hire.

But it has several attractive houses, which have been mainly taken by families from London’s professional classes. They have certainly cared for and invigorated the hamlet; but the population and social mix are respectively too small and narrow to sustain Combe as a village with a village’s essential attributes – a shop and a pub.

 

Its attractions are obvious, on a sunny day at least. A great semi-circle of steep hillside, wooded, arable, or sheep-sprinkled, summons walkers.

 

We toil up, by track and path. (Hereabouts, there are innumerable rights of way.) On the ridge, the reward is magnificent, far ranging views, seemingly across undisturbed rural landscape, although Newbury lurks inconspicuously to the East.

 

This is an ambiguous landscape. Most of what one sees are territories of big, private estates. Just a handful of people or institutions own nearly half of Berkshire. What falls equally on the eyes of all is very unequal underfoot. The broad acres of Britain, here and elsewhere, are still owned by very few.

 

Of course, we have reason to be grateful for sustaining landowners that view themselves as steward of a rural heritage that should be enjoyed by all, within reason (I’m thinking, for good example, of Holkham in Norfolk). But a lot of land owning is vanity, or main chance- a change of planning zone, a handsome profit.; over intensive and damaging farming. Or it’s shooting, especially pheasants. Tens of millions of birds are bred each year, to be released and shot by landowners and paying guests (City bankers? Oligarchs? Trump children?). This is more than faintly disgusting – paying by the day or week for the lethal trappings of a country gentleman’s life.

 

These pessimistic musings apart, walking is good and free on the various crests of the Downs. For this we must thank the folk that, over the millennia, established the “high” roads along the tops, such as the Ridgeway a little further North, and others. They have survived as public bye ways. Walbury is also the starting point for two the ancient paths - the Wayfarer's Walk,

and the Test Way, both probably ancient drovers' routes heading to points near the Hampshire coast.

 

The Few may own the slopes and valleys. The Many still own the heights.

 

August 2020