thames path

it was back to the thames path yesterday. as we also did last time, we started the walk in a church and ended in a pub (how like life …)

we started by St John’s Baptist church inglesham

this section of the walk was all by the thames (unlike last time when we hardly saw the thames at all). here was our first sight of the river which was now big enough for pleasure boats

and there was the obligatory pooh sticks

we passed old father thames at St John’s lock

we ended up in a very nice pub (the plough) at kelmscott. you can plot our course on this map here:

every time we walk a part of the thames path we get extreme weather conditions: our first walk was in sub zero windy conditions, and our most recent trip was in a torrential downpour for most of the walk.

yesterday we had extreme heat, with the temperature probably around 30 degrees and much allegies (hayfever and skin rashes) had by all.
the red lion at castle eaton backs on to the Thames and is very lovely. you should go.

this part of the walk felt like a bit of a swizz as we only briefly saw the river thames for a few moments on the whole 6 mile trundle. instead we spent much time walking down field edges and small farm tracks. lovely, but not the thames !

our inspiring end point – if you are interested in seeing where we were, you can have a look on google map here here

here was our first sighting of the thames on this part of the walk

kezia said “everytime we walk the Thames Path it rains” and yesterday was no exception. it fact the rain was exception – in quantity. we were soaked to the bone. but i got to wear my military poncho which was a boon
to begin with things weren’t too muddy, but with the wind and the rain it soon got very slippery and muddy. this was quite a nice bit near the beginning

obligatory pooh-sticks

things weren’t helped by a sudden jump in undergrowth meaning we lost sight of the path quite a lot. These weeds were higher than esther’s head !

we’re making slow progress round the path (it’s taken us 4 days to go the walk which the book says should be doable in a day). but then we have got a 4 year old with us !

back we went to Keynes to continue our walk of the Thames Path.
the first thing we did was have a good game of pooh-sticks

then we walked along a lovely wide, smooth, quite shallow stretch of the river

we continued through Ashton Keynes

then we didn’t see the thames much for the rest of our walk as the thames path veers off through some quarries

the walk did rejoin the river just before we ended the day’s stretch

all in all, a very successful trip. we didn’t get too cold, rained on or tired !

the plan is to walk the thames path with jane’s parents. jane’s mum (known to the girls as poochy) is an expert on wild life which is extremely useful !
here is chris giving blog-land a wave (whilst requesting a chocolate biscuit)

we continued our walk down the Thames Path yesterday. You may remember that last week’s 12 miles were cut short because of kezia misery, so we picked up the walk where we left it – kemble train station.
at this stage the thames is just a small stream and incredibly clear.

wooden bridges provided plenty of opportunities for pooh sticks

the thames continues to snake round the edge of fields. here a telegraph pole spans the width

And near our destination it starts doing some fancy corner-work through some little wooded areas

Unfortunately kezia was ill again and her misery brought our journey to an end at keynes country park

so, we’ll pick the walk up again at somerford keynes in a few weeks time when we’ve next got a free weekend for walking. at this rate we should get it finished by the time the girls leave secondary school !

(and we got rained on lots)

we’ve decided as a family to walk the thames path and yesterday we went in search of the source. The walk is 184 miles long and starts here:

we’re following the walk using this book, although there are other books too:

the girls sang a song at the start to mark the beginning of our trail

you’d expect there to be some water whizzing out of this spring at this time of year, but there was no sign of water here, or across the field where the thames sometimes flows

however, once we were over a main road we started to see the path the Thames sometimes takes

actual water started flowing in to the Thames from this ancient spring called Lyd Well. So here we see the watery start of the Thames

and then we were walking along an actual, wet, river Thames

and an attractive little stream it looked too

we planned to walk for 12 miles along the river, but we only managed a couple as it was too cold for little Kezia who was frozen like a lolly. so we went back to the car which we’d parked at Kemble station.

to be continued …