🇬🇧 Hiking Blackwater Valley (Reading) | A Birder’s Paradise

Four years after my first visit (dig through my feed for ancient 2020 photos 📜), I returned with a camera and birdwatching gear—and this easy riverside trail did not disappoint! 🌿 Trail Highlights Difficulty: Beginner-friendly (89m elevation over 10.6km). Scenery: Rustic fields, ancient oaks, and dark-red tinted waterways (hence "Blackwater"). Wildlife Wins: Treecreeper (a lifer!) tagging along with blue tits. Kingfisher (spotted but too quick for my lens 😅). Baby robins begging for food like tiny feathered clowns. 🤡 Azure damselflies dancing along the river. History Quirk: This forest was Henry VII’s hunting ground—where he learned of Catherine of Aragon’s arrival (little did he know that drama!). 📍 Logistics 🚂 Start/End: Horseshoe Lake Activity Centre (add 1km if coming from Sandhurst station). 🚼 Family-proof: Flat enough for strollers + dog walkers. 🐞 Missed Opportunities No stag beetles at the artificial log piles (sigh—these rare giants thrive only in Southern England). Green woodpecker escaped my camera… again. #UKHiking #BirdPhotography #LondonWeekends