This summer we walked the Itchen Way, over five weekends from July through to August.
The Itchen Way is a 31.80 mile walk which (more or less) follows the Itchen from the coast to its source near Cheriton. We often walk the portion of the river which flows through Riverside Park and decided that this year we would make it our mission to see the rest of its course.
Our guide for this walk was 'The Itchen Way' which is published by the Eastleigh Ramblers and available at a couple of local shops in Hampshire - we got ours from the shop at the Itchen Valley Country Park.
The guide book splits the walk into 8 legs of varying lengths and we paired some of these up to make a total of five walks - four longer and one shorter.
Part 1 - Sholing to Mansbridge (7.18 miles) 1 July 2017
The first leg of the walk took us from Sholing station to Mansbridge - we left the car at Riverside Park and took a taxi to the station as there was no convenient public transport connection. This is the longest leg of the walk at 7.18 miles and took us about 2.5 hours to complete. The first third of the walk through Mayfield Park and the Weston wetlands to Weston Shore was very pleasant.
The second section of the walk was rather less interesting, doglegging it's way through the built up housing of Southampton to stay as close to the river as possible. We stayed true to the route and followed the looping route but it was a little frustrating to know we could easily of knocked off half an hour by sticking to a straighter path!
The final section of the route put us on familiar ground as we walked up through Riverside Park and back to Mansbridge.
We combined two stages of the guidebook for our second walk and put together the Mansbridge to Bishopstoke and Bishopstoke to Shawford legs to make one longer walk. This was easily done using public transport with Southampton Airport Parkway a short walk from Mansbridge, and Shawford station about 30 seconds away from the end of the walk. We picked a lovely day with the sun shining down and this was probably my favourite leg of the walk - lots of pretty footpaths along the riverside and a nice pub at the end!
We opted to stick with a single section from the guidebook for this leg of the walk as we were a little short for time. To make the logistics work we parked in Winchester and took the train back to Shawford then walked back to the car. The walk along the river was again very pleasant and we took the optional extension up St Catherine's Hill before returning to the Itchen Way and heading into town. Overall this made a pleasant hour and a half walk.
Part 4 - Winchester to Itchen Stoke (7.39 miles) 6 August 2017
The logistics got a little tricky here as we were walking on a Sunday, when the bus service doesn't run! Fortunately we were joined by a friend who also drives and were able to leave one car at the end of the walk (there's space for 2-3 cars at the end of Water Lane in Itchen Stoke) then drive back to Winchester and do the walk. This was a cross-country ramble where we often didn't see the river at all, but it made for a nice walk, if slightly more strenuous than the earlier legs.
Part 5 - Itchen Stoke to Cheriton Source (6.42 miles) 13th August 2017
The last leg of our walk saw us leave one car at Hinton Ampner National Trust and then take the other back to our parking spot at Water Lane in Itchen Stoke. We got a little lost in the hills above Cheriton and had to backtrack to find a way across the river, but once on the right side of the water the final push to the Cheriton Source was easy downhill walking and we found the (distinctly underwhelming) source bubbling up by the side of the road. We were slightly worried about getting locked in at Hinton Ampner so we pushed straight on back to the car (we needn't have worried, the gates are automatic and will let cars out even after they are shut!)
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| The end of the Itchen Way |
Overall we thoroughly enjoyed our walks through the countryside and the Itchen Way gave us a great focus to our summer's walking. 2-3 hours a day was plenty for us and Sunday afternoon's turned out to be a very nice time to go for a walk.
