My road dipped down through the village, and to the left by the “Greyhound” and up between steep banks under larch trees. On the right a few yards up that road a footpath used to go for two miles towards Wallingford, but it was covered by corn for the first part, and I kept to the road. I was soon going past the Ewelme cow common again, but along the opposite side; and there were cows among its thorns. For a few yards, after crossing the Benson and Dorchester road at Gypsies’ Corner, I was in the Upper Icknield Way again, but turned to the right, due west, leaving Clack’s Farm on the south instead of the west. I was then going down towards the green-striped cornland, the clustered trees of the Thames Valley, and the pale spire and tower of Wallingford rising out of it. The low, long curves of land meeting or intersecting a little above the river were like those of a brier with nothing to climb. In the hedges there were wild roses and masses of traveller’s joy, with all its grey-green buds very large. Instead of following the road round its bend to the south-west, I turned just past the bend into a green lane to the right, which made straight for Wallingford spire; and into this lane presently came the footpath from Ewelme and a parallel old lane. However, I had to turn sharp to the left to reach Crowmarsh Gifford and Wallingford. Crowmarsh is a wide street of old cottages leading to Wallingford bridge. Wallingford climbs the right bank up from the bridge, and out of its crowded brick rise the tower and the spire of two churches, and the ivied tower of a castle, of the kind that looks as if it had been ready-made ruinous and ivied, with a flagstaff on top. I crossed the bridge to the town, and went up the narrow, old street, past an inn called “The Shakespeare,” to the small square of small shops, where red and blue implements of farming stood by the pillared town hall and the sun poured on them. I went into the “private bar” of an inn, but hearing only a blue-bottle and seeing little but a polished table, and smelling nothing else, I went out and round the corner to the taproom of the same inn. Here there were men, politics, crops, beer, and shag tobacco. [Illustration: Wallingford Bridge.]