Walking the Thames

I met Karyn n Marty in the early hours at Paddington station, and we met the others on the train itself. As their new year’s resolution, Nell and Panni had decided to walk the entire length of the Thames this year. There are even dedicated guidebooks to doing this, with The Thames Path going the entire length and the ‘walks’ being broken up into different segments of the river itself.

We reached the township of Marlow to begin the first of the two segments that we were going to walk. A brief toilet stop for (nearly) all and we were on our way. Great weather and it wasn’t long before jackets were being removed as we were entertained by Richard’s dog, India. India loves the water, so at nearly EVERY opportunity she was IN the Thames.

Once outside London, the Thames itself is quite picturesque, and as we made our way along it, we got to see all manner of habitation, history and countryside. Sailing clubs, houses, castles, fields, forests and even a “sixteenth century” church built in 1232 - this is what Nell’s guidebook said!!
Anyway, we finally reached Bray, and what Nell promised as one of the best pub restaurants in the region. Only we had a slight problem - we were on the wrong side of the river and that particular lock would not get us across the river! It would be about a 5 mile detour to get there, so we continued on until we found another pub in a nearby village. As far as most of us were concerned, sitting in the beer garden under the sun with the food on offer here was pretty good. Their locally made ice-cream just topped it off.

Back on the path in the sunshine, we covered the remaining few miles to Windsor in a decent time, and with time to see both India ‘play’ with the swans of Windsor as well as stop off for a well deserved drink in a local pub. After a short time of relaxing we headed to the hotel to book in and freshen up for dinner in a local restaurant. A good way to finish off the day.

Monday - you just have to love long weekends - was a slightly slower start, but one in which we were soon underway for day 2 of our ‘walk’.

We continued towards London, although our destination was Shepparton (not the one in Victoria). This took us past Windsor Castle, Eton College and the Windsor Racecourse. Certainly a very affluent area!
It also took us past several locks, fields, some more forests before beginning to look more and more like civilisation with more and more housing appearing.
We stopped on the correct side of the river for lunch at the Swan Hotel, which was rather aptly named considering we had just passed a nesting swan on the bank! That’s it pictured here - nice how you can pull the boat up for a pint!
The food here was excellent (if you ignore the steak sandwich), and I tried what is a local “delicacy” known as Eat and Mess. This is a dessert that consists of berries, ice-cream, meringue and cream in a tall sundae glass. It’s name comes from its origin where it was accidentally dropped on creation - hence the ‘mess’ part. It’s very much like a berry layered pavlova that’s been smashed... Twas goood.

Across the river and on our way again, the Thames began to resemble a very English version of West Lakes (for want of a better analogy). Very nice housing lining the banks on both sides of the river, and it did appear a bit like a retirement location for those into leisurely cruising the river on their boats.

Upon eventually reaching the train station at Shepperton, it was time to sit back and rest our weary feet and legs on the trip back to London. We had actually just walked over a marathon in the two days as we’d done almost 30 miles!

A really nice weekend away with a good bunch of people - I’m looking forward to the next section they do.