Sunday Walk, Lunch & Drinks

Relaxing Sunday walk to the country pub in Reading named The Cunning Man, which offers pub classics, including steak & mushroom pie and beer-battered fish and chips, as well as seasonal surprises. And a well-stocked bar, including cask ales, lager, fine wines, British gin and soft drinks to suit every taste.

Cunning folk, also known as folk healers or wise folk, were practitioners of folk medicine, helpful folk magic and divination in Europe from the Middle Ages until the 20th century. Their practices were known as the cunning craft. Their services also included thwarting witchcraft.

We will walk along the River Kennet. The Kennet has good numbers of cuckoo and woodcock, which is most often seen on its straight 'roding' flights at dusk. The nightingale, too, sings from riverside thickets in Ramsbury. Every year it returns from Africa in mid-April to sing from apparently the same bush.

Many water birds use the river, from the mallard ducks, some of them crossed with domestic ducks, to grey herons and the secretive water rail, whose presence is given away by its strange loud squeal.

We will meet at Protected content , for about 1 hour and 30 minute walk to The Cunning Man and have a drink or meal there and once back in Reading (aprox. at 16:30) at Three Guineas Protected content - as a social activity complementary to the hiking, for those staying a bit longer.