Thursday 15 July 2010
So we set out from the car park in Little Marlow into a bit of a dull cloudy morning. The weather improved slowly and was getting brighter as we reached Cookham.
Cookham is a pleasant little village. Its claim to fame is that Sir Stanley Spencer RA, the celebrated 20 century artist was born in Cookham and is buried in the churchyard. There is a gallery of his works in the village.
Unfortunately as we were off to an early start the gallery wasn’t open but here is a link to the Gallery’s website - http://stanleyspencer.org.uk/
After the detour into Cookham we reached the river once again opposite the Clivedon estate, well known for the Profumo & Christine Keeler affair in the 60’s.
Sadly, the house is not visible from the river, just some riverside chalets, which Steve tells me can be rented - Steve has always led a much richer life than me!
Anyway the conditions on the river must have been pretty rough along this stretch recently as we came across a few boats that were pretending to be submersibles. I thought the blue tarpaulin was a bit superfluous though.
Boulter Lock signified that we had reached the outskirts of Maidenhead. I of course was on the look out for the nearest Costa Coffee for my mid-morning cappuchino, but Steve told me it was a big detour from our route to get into the centre of town, so I had to make do with a bog standard white coffee from a roadside cafe. The sacrifices I make on this journey!
Talking of sacrifices, I had persuaded Steve to detour from the designated Thames Path so that we could have lunch at Heston Blumenthal’s pub the Hinds Head in Bray. Bray is a lovely little village and seems to have a remarkable number of well known restaurants for such a small place, including the Fat Duck and the Waterside of course.
So it turned out that lunch in the Hinds Head was of course the most expensive lunch we have had on this trip so far - by far. Still the calves liver was delicious and certainly sustained us well for the remaining 5 miles of the afternoon.
There is no river crossing at Bray so in order to get back onto the Thames Path we needed a bridge of course. I had done a bit of research but there were a few anxious moments as the looked-for bridge took a good while to materialise (thank you Google satellite view - great relief all round). Not long after the footbridge we met a Dutch couple who asked for directions (little did they know!). They had cycled from Holland via Dover and asked us if they were on the right track for Ireland! I suggested that Heathrow may be more convenient but they were to determined to cycle there via Wales - amazing.
In no time at all - thanks to the excellent lunch probably - Windsor appeared on the horizon. The view of the castle across the water meadows is magnificient even now and must have been stunning when it it was new.
So journey’s end. Next time we should reach Shepperton and the closest to home before we strike out for London.
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