The day started brightly as we parked in the station car park at Tilehurst. We felt a bit like commuters again! We had decided to use nordic poles once more as it definitely makes the walking easier, plus during the week my friend Joanna gave me a copy of Metro newspaper with a double page spread extolling the virtues of nordic pole walking and promoting it as the next trendy outdoor activity. Once again we find ourselves ahead of the curve!
Anyway it was a very pleasant early morning walk along the river. There are lots of flotillas of ducklings, goslings and cygnets on the river at the moment, all bobbing along following mum or dad and trying not to get left behind.
The first landmark we came to was Caversham bridge, which looked very impressive. We don’t use the poles once we hit a town as we are expecting some bright spark to shout “Oi mate, where’s your skis?” Caversham was an opportunity for a caffeine stop to give us the drive to get on towards lunch.
Sonning is a lovely, typically English riverside village, where Sir Terence Rattigan, the dramatist, lived for a period.
Lunch today was a very pleasant rest sitting in the sunny outdoor courtyard of the historic Bull Inn at Sonning.
It’s always a bit of a struggle to get going again after lunch, so we had a quick look around St Andrews church which originally dates back to Saxon times, but the current building was largely rebuilt in 1852. Adjoining the church is Deanery Garden, one of Sir Edwin Lutyen's best-known country houses built at the turn of the century.
There are some fabulous properties along this stretch of the Thames and you can get quite close to one which has a sit on and ride type model steam railway in the grounds and this amazing scaled recreation of St Moritz railway station!
So from Shiplake it was a fairly easy stroll into Henley and back to the hustle and bustle of boats and people and then home for a shower and a doze!
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