Frilsham is in the North Wessex Downs Area of Outstanding Natural Beauty. This covers a unique and spectacular landscape that includes tranquil open downland, ancient woodland and chalk streams in the centre of southern England. North Wessex Downs website
Footpaths are a great feature of the village, criss crossing over pasture and through woodland and providing a great opportunity to see the roe, fallow and muntjac deer and a wide range of birds, including red kite, buzzard, woodpeckers, nuthatches and finches. You may even be lucky enough to see a kingfisher along the river Pang.
Dick Greenaway of the West Berkshire Countryside Society has produced a new Walks Leaflet for Frilsham Parish.
Each Walk Leaflet describes a single walk and has a good clear map with pictures and information about the countryside through which the walk passes. We have made Parish Paths Leaflets for many West Berkshire parishes. The map in each Parish Paths leaflet shows every track and path in the parish over which the public has a Right of Way. This right is as legally valid as the right to drive along a highway. The leaflets also contain a brief note and pictures about each path.
To download a copy of the new Frilsham leaflet, click Local Footpaths
A valuable spin-off of creating a Parish Paths leaflet is that every path has to be walked and recorded, and access and other problems identified. Problems are reported to West Berkshire Council’s Rights of Way Department whose staff do their level best – with the limited resources available to them – to remedy the problems. In the case of the Frilsham paths they were able to clear two seriously blocked paths – path 20 and path 5 where Yattendon Estate helped by repairing stiles. A problem with Path 14 was solved with the help of Eling Estate.
Parish Paths leaflets benefit the landowner as well as the walker. If the paths on his or her patch are clear, well-marked and have sound stiles, bridges and gates then any objection to a walker straying from them is valid. Also, this reduces the risk of someone being injured by a collapsing structure and subsequently making a claim.
This all sounds rather formal and pedantic, but walking and exploring are fun and the more you walk and the more you look, the more an area becomes your HOME rather than just a place where you LIVE!
One of the most popular walks in Frilsham is the circular walk from the Pot Kiln to Stanford Dingley and back, For more information click Pot Kiln to Stanford Dingley walk
For examples of walks in the wider area, try John Harris's website