Jake didnt get much of a walk on Sunday - maybe he didnt deserve one because he kept barking at the 15 monthold boy that Robert and Hiliary were minding. Yvonne rang up from Longleat and said bad weather was on its way - it had just got to her. So I decided that Jake's first walk would be his big one for the day.

We jumped into the hire car and set off for Hampshire - I do hope the hire contract doesnt have a doghair&muddypaws exclusion clause. I drove West along the Hogs Back to Farnham and then looped into the other end of the town and took the road Northwest up to Crondall but branched West after a couple of miles.

The road climbed up around 500 feet and levelled out and I drove along looking for a footpath with a good parking place. After a couple of miles I came to Gravelly Woood which fitted the bill - just past something on the map labelled in Gothic script as Ring and Baileys.

The path lead from the highest point on that section of road Northeast down the slope back to Crondall via Travers Farm. As we emerged from the wood we could look to our left across to the odd shape of Horsedown Common. One of the features of chalk landscape is the occaisional hump curve orswelling that looks utterly female. The Common has two round peaks about 300 yards apart and we could see a couple of people strolling over the hills - so we put that in our futurewalks file and went West up Well Road. This leads to a small village called Well - you can do the puns for yourself.

(Must mention that the path up Horsedown Common goes past Pope's Hole House - fancy the Augstan Poet's Orifice meriting a domicile - bet you think I am making this up.)

If anyone from outside the UK is reading this they probably won't have heard of Pevsner. Pevsner was a Jewish architectural historian who left Germany in the 30s and adopted the UK - so thoroughly that he wrote a set of books, one for each county, covering all the buildings of note. But for some reason he didnt include Well - odd because most of the houses in the village (and there aren't many) look to me over 200 years old - and right at the centre of the village is the well with a gothic-ish well cover. Pevsner is great for telling you whether such things are original or some kind of revival conceit. It would be a funny place to put a conceit given there aren't any big Victorian revival houses around but you never really know.

Well is actually the cross roads on the road from Crondall to Alton with the road from Farnham to Old Basing - whose castle was the main estate of the 50 or so that Hugh de Port got from William the Conqueror. I vaguely remember that it is alos the birthplace of the first Abbot of Merton Priory. From Well Jake and I looked North West down the chalk dip slope towards Reading and the Thames.

Then we completed our circle back along the Basing-Farnham Rd to the car and the wood. This bit of the route gave views south over the upper Wey valley which carries the railway and main road from Farnham to Alton where the railway turns into the Watercress line to New Arlesford. This is a preservation railway and when the children were younger we would take a Santa ride on this pulled by a steam train. The road carries on past Arlesford to Winchester.

The view South was really interesting. Maybe I have mentioned that this part of England is symmetrical around the high land of Ashdown Forest - Pooh Bear-Brian Jones country. Some of this symmetry is North-South but at the West side all the strata loop round to join up. So besides the North Downs and the South Downs there ought to be the West Downs as well.

From where Jake and I were we could see the long dip slope of Greensand from Haslemere. When Rob and I did our 3 day Winchester walk we spent a morning going down that slope - only getting mildly lost. The afternoon was spent getting to quite a famous village at the foot of what could be called the West Downs - a place called Selbourne which is famous in the annals of botany as the home of the 17th century naturalist Gilbert White and in the annals of English Lunacy as the home of Oates who did the decent thing with Scott in the Antartic.

Anyway there was a good view sideways on of the chalk scarp at Selbourne and beyond that down to the higher chalk hills surrounding the River Meon which flows south into Southampton Water. I think we could see Old Winchester Hill which for reasons everyone has forgotten is about 10 miles from Winchester. You could also see the part of the Lower Greensand Ridge which runs East-West- a series of hilltops rising up to the highest point in Southern England - Leith Hill - where Vaughan Williams lived for many years and organised a music festival.

Jake and I jumped in the car and drove up to Well to turn off towards Alton. We stopped to have a look at Frog Lane. This is an old sunken path - perhaps 15 feet down from the surrounding fields. I was hoping we would be able to find the earthwork marked on the map just off the lane but it was actually too deep and slippery to climb out of so we gave up and looked across the field from where we had parked at the line of trees that cover it. Frog Lane might be part of the old high road from Farnham down to Winchester.

You will have guessed that this trip was a recce for the cross-Hampshire trek I have in mind following Fridays drive down the Hampshire-Wiltshire Border. I think the Hampshire Downs themselves have to be part of this. If we start at Farnham then its a day's walk to Old Basing - then we might as well get a taxi across Basingstoke to the Roman Road which still limits the towns expansion west. From there there is a continuous line of High Chalk which curves in and out across to the county taking in the highest point on the chalk in the country - a few feet lower than Leith Hill - and much else besides. We could do trips off eg to the amazing painted chapel which Stanley Spencer created at Sandham did as private commission for a family who lost their son in the First World War. When I did the part of the Thames walk with Rob and Paul we dropped in on the Spencer Gallery in Cookham and chatted to a man whose daughter went to the same College as myself.

Yvonne and Vita got back from Centre Parcs looking amazingly healthy after all that cycling swimming sauna tabletennis etc.

Have to confess have been working on the Graham/Frederick track. Watched some of the Palace Concert which had more highspots than I expected. Jake and I went out to see if we could see the London fireworks in the distance but we couldnt be bothered to go high enough up the hill for that.