A Day in the Country

A bank holiday weekend, and it’s out on the bike again with Phil. We gave Richmond Park another go, but usual English weather put paid to that. We did a few laps, but the 32mph winds were just getting silly, so we called it a day. Certainly didn't stop the deer doing their thing (above).

We caught up again on the holiday Monday for another shot, but this time we used the park purely as a meeting point. We headed off for a ride that took us along the Thames through Kensington (right), past Hampton Court Palace before following the Thames again all the way to Windsor. Along the way, we passed through Shepperton, Staines and Egham, which you may recall from the first Walking the Thames post last year. It was kinda cool to pass by some of the places I'd seen from the path by the river, while heading in the opposite direction.
We did stop off at Runnymeade by the Magna Carta memorial, to enjoy a coffee in a small café/tea room by the river. [by the way, you'll need to excuse the photography here as it was all taken from on the bike - ie; while moving.] Anyway, from here we headed through Old Windsor, which took us past the walkway to Windsor Castle (right). They do do impressive castles over here... We then took a left turn and after a K or two, went into Great Windsor Park (below left). What a fantastic park too. Almost no cars, a spattering of tarmac roads through this picturesque place, plenty of walking trails and also specific "horse only" trails. The horse riders even had elevated buttons to use to open the gates. But basically just a massive English country estate and park full of forestry, tree spattered grasslands and the afore-mentioned paths...
The area surrounding the park was also fairly amazing when you pass by some of the incredible mansions and just old housing estates. We had a pretty good cruise past many of these places before finding the London-Oxford cycle route (sign posted by Sustrans) and using this to help find our way back to the Thames. From here we located our original route and retraced it back to Richmond Park.

The round trip of the day worked out at just on 90kms and despite the lack of sunshine was a great day out exploring the English countryside.