This post is for #SublimeSunday is inspired by 
This morning we set off on a walk which turned out to be absolutely fantastic. The weather was lovely for one and everyone we bumped into stopped for a chat, it was really nice. We followed, vaguely, a walk guide we picked up from our local village hall. However since it was updated in 2013, we knew that a lot had changed since the map was first published. New houses had been built in that time, a new road and even a new film studio.
With all that said and done, the pathways hadn't actually changed and if anything the local councils had connected them up a lot more. We made the wonderful discovery that we could walk for a very long way, from our village of Spencers Wood we can walk or cycle as far as Wokingham, possibly further. This is exciting because around here we don't need the car, we can just walk almost everywhere.
I tracked this walk with Strava and my previous post logged via Strava2Hive recorded a distance of nearly 6 miles walked, so the step counts are good and we burnt the best part of 100 calories each.
Not only that, it was a fascinating walk.
The land around us was/is mostly owned by Reading university. During the Cold War they were gifted with land for the purposes of Agricultural research, quite a lot of this I suspect was connected with the work of AWE (Advanced Weapons Establishment) based in Aldermaston, around 5 miles away.
A lot of the research after this period soon subsided and land went up for sale. We live in one of the new build houses and are very happy with how our estate is set up but I can totally appreciate, people are against development of vast swathes of properties up and down the country.
A lot of land is still under consideration, so a lot of the photos I take around here, I feel are important, you never know quite what will happen. I hope the farming practices around here keep on going, as the countryside opens up and is beautiful. I'd hate for every single inch of it to be ripped up.... anyway, on with the walk folks!
The path started by a farm with some interesting land, we could spot a number of fruit trees and old polytunnel frames that had long been taken down. We'll follow this path again sometime and see if there are any signs of activity. Just on the other side of the hedge, we could see that the farm otherwise is very active.
The fields are starting to turn green, the warm winter days and sunshine are waking up the crops. Soon we reckon this field will become a carpet of yellow, oilseed rape.
We spotted a number of these little homemade boxes, all of them were numbered. Geocache? Don't think so. Doremice research? Very unlikely, as they're only ever found in dense woodlands.... or something else, we had no idea. We joked (we've a dark sense of humour) about them being used by drugs dealers.
The walk featured two especially interesting things and the first one. I can almost confirm as being part of the Star Wars Acolyte film set.), as this is the back of Shinfield Studios which has recently been taking shape at a rapid pace. You can also catch glimpses of it from the M4 motorway.
Further along the path we came across some lovely old farm buildings that must date back to Victorian times, judging by their architecture. I've seen a similar chimney to this at our village hall. I came up with a theory, they may be connected? Same builder or architect? A lot of buildings then would have been built by a handful of tradesmen.
This old farm building has a lovely old doorway. I would love to know what it was used for. It's possible it's still used for something as behind it, we could see large cattlesheds, which is where the university dairy research centre is.
This was the second really interesting discovery was. The ruins of the old Arborfield church and the site of the Saxon village. The modern village is another mile down the road, where the current day church is located.
I later found some interesting history about the connection between the farms here and the local brewery business that after moving from one site to another ended up becoming Courage, which was once located off the M4 junction for Reading until around 1980.
Stepping into the ruins of the church, I knew this would make an interesting location for future photographic projects. It needs a special kind of light, today wasn't really ideal for it, the sun was quite harsh. Nature has taken over here, with trees growing out of the remains. The shell of the church still exists. I believe the church fell into disrepair after the priest who served the chapel was forbidden to officiate. Records indicate a chapel had existed here as far back as 1220 and was originally built of wood.
Elizabeth Simonds was a member of the local family who lived on the estate and the history behind them is fascinating. I've been doing some digging today to find out what I can. So far I know they owned a nearby mill at Sindlesham, now a hotel and were the founders of what became one of the largest breweries in the country at the time.
Having spent quite a bit of time exploring the fascinating church, we picked up a path alongside the River Loddon, one of the rivers that makes it's confluence with the River Thames, at Sonning I believe. It's a fairly wild river, that's hard to walk along it's entirety plus I suspect hard to kayak - don't know if anyone has ever tried it either!
This sign is unconnected with the previous locations, as we had got back to our own village. We found this sign in the middle of an old copse, possibly one that dates back to Tudor times??? Not sure, will do my research!
That was a big post, thanks for reading and have a lovely week :-)