Walk in Maidenhead, about 5 miles

Sunday 10 March

Another walk with Ray. We'd actually planned a while back to do the route of the Maidenhead Boundary Walk, a circular walk of about 14 miles, but wimped out of that. We also had to make an early diversion to Ray's employer's property to remove some branches from the road after a tree had fallen in the heavy winds. After that we went over to Norden Farm for a cup of tea and a sit down - I'm sure I remember there being a much better cake selection the last time we were there, but on this occasion had to content myself with a Stroopwafel.

After refreshments, we parked on Bridle Road and turned down Harrow Road past Furze Platt station (a stop on the branch line between Maidenhead and Marlow) and what was the Farmers Boy pub, now closed. Came out onto Cookham Road almost opposite the parade of shops that used to contain a Ritz Video, where Ray and I rented a LOT of Star Trek Deep Space Nine episodes at one point in the past. Turned right onto Garretts Lane, which soon becomes a footpath leading onto North Town Moor. We followed footpaths for a while before coming out onto Ray Mill Road West.

This part of Maidenhead has a whole heap of roads with ‘Ray’ in the title: Ray Mill Roads West and East; Ray Park Avenue, Ray Lea Road, Ray Drive, Ray Street; the charmingly-named In The Ray. There’s a biggish house Ray Lodge, now converted into flats. I lived briefly (before falling out with the other tenants) at Ray Lodge Mews in the early 1990s. A brief bit of digging suggests that ‘Ray’ was the surname of a once-prominent local family.

We walked to Boulter's Lock and crossed over onto Ray Mill Island (there the Rays are again). I didn’t know, but there’s been quite a bit of development here on this stretch between the Thames and the new(ish) Jubilee River – there’s a new footbridge and a shedload of new houses and flats ('Taplow Riverside'). As well as all the housing there are also some nice new pedestrian walkways. We spent quite a while mooching around here.

The new footbridge

Walkway and the Jubilee River

Housing at Taplow Riverside

We walked past what used to be Skindles and is now posh new housing and a posh-looking restaurant called ‘Roux at Skindles’. When I lived in Maidenhead in the early 1990s it housed the Studio Valbonne nightclub, where I clubbed a few times in the days when I did such things. The club’s heyday was way before my time; this source has some interesting snippets about its glamorous history. The new Roux restaurant's Skindles History page notes that ‘in the 1990s, Skindles became a rundown venue hosting discos’ which sounds about right from my memory. It closed in the mid-1990s and the building stood empty for 20 years before being bought up for redevelopment.

We walked into the town centre via Guards Club Park. Access to the island is closed at this time of year because of nesting birds. We had lunch at Funkywood.

The footbridge leading to Guards Club Island

Our route shown in red. It doesn't show as circular because I stopped the tracker when we stopped for lunch.

But here's the rest of it. After leaving the restaurant we walked through Maidenhead's uninspiring town centre (though it's not as bad as Bedford's), across Kidwells Park and along roads back to Ray's car.

Walk near Maidenhead, just over 4 miles

Saturday 3 November

Little walk with Ray on a pleasantly sunny Saturday afternoon. We only had a couple of hours as we were due for tea at his parents’ house. We parked at the ‘Butterfly Trail’ car park on Henley Road and crossed the footbridge over the A404(M) into Maidenhead Thicket.

An extension to the A404 (M) was put through one side of Maidenhead Thicket in the early 1990s - the road can be seen towards the top right of the route map below. SABRE mention the work here. The footbridge we crossed was put in at the same time (as otherwise the new dual carriageway would have cut off access to the Thicket). Digressing, the SABRE piece also mentions the former A4(M) Maidenhead bypass, part of which is now the A404(M) and part of which is now abandoned. I’d never noticed before, but the abandoned section is clearly visible on Google Maps, cut in half by the A308(M). Fascinating stuff.

Snip showing abandoned route of A4(M)

Returning to the walk. Ray was just musing on how the section we were walking through seemed much more open than formerly, when we came across a large area that had been cleared. There’s evidently a project ongoing to replace a former larch plantation with native trees (‘Native woodland regeneration at Maidenhead Thicket’).

Area of cleared ground

Thicketyness

We walked a way further through the thicket before bearing left to come out on the Bath Road. Crossed and walked down Cherry Garden Lane as far as the junction with the tiny Breadcroft Lane, which we took. This little road wends its way southeast, crossing over the M4, to come out on Cannon Lane in Woodlands Park, a southern suburb of Maidenhead. We turned left and headed north on Cannon Lane back towards Maidenhead. Just after passing under the M4 we turned right onto Altwood Road and then took the footpath just beyond the Thatched Cottage which leads behind houses through onto Sandisplatt Road. Came out onto the A4 and then turned up Newlands Drive and across the common back to the car park.

Map of our route:

Christmas and New Year

At the OU we’re lucky enough to get the days in between the Boxing Day and New Year’s Day bank holidays as Closure Days, on top of our already quite generous annual leave entitlement. This year I also booked off the rest of the week that included New Year’s Day, I think in the vague idea that we might go away somewhere for New Year, though in the end (as has happened before) I did some brief research, decided it was quite expensive and then didn’t actually book anywhere. Anyway, even though we didn’t go away, it gave me a full fortnight’s leave, which was nice.

On the Friday evening pre-Christmas Ruth and I went for dinner at Ray's, which was adorned prettily with a red glow as per below.

On the Saturday I baked a batch of mince pies and in the evening our neighbours Kris and Laura came round for dinner, bringing with them an extremely impressive cake.

Mince pies

Kris and Laura's cake

Spent Christmas Eve through to Boxing Day morning at Dave’s place in Newport, which was lovely. Nia lost her first tooth on Christmas Eve, which added to the sense of occasion. The tooth fairy left her a quite generous £2, though did emphasise that this was only because it was her first wiggly tooth.

On Boxing Day everyone came back to Mum and Dad’s where Hannah and Henry joined us for a roast beef lunch. We walked over to Bailey Park with the children where they had a bit of a play.

Huwie looking adorable on a swing

Impressed by little Huw’s feisty behaviour during the stay – suspected he was keen to be walking, as he was not at all impressed by just sitting on people’s laps or being put down on the floor. Amused by the level of fury that can be emitted by such a tiny creature.

Nia had acquired a ghastly game called ‘Gassy the Cow – Will She Moo or Will She Poo?’ which Hannah and I nobly spent some time playing with her, though much of our time was spent trying to unblock the plastic pats from the back end of Gassy as she didn’t seem to be expelling them as per expectations. Here’s Nia with a couple of the pats.

I returned to Reading early on the 27^th, collecting Ruth from her aunt’s house on the way. She seemed to have spent a pleasant few days with Auntie, including lunch at her uncle’s house on Christmas Day and a walk to the Boxing Day Meet the following day.

Then spent an enjoyable few days in Caversham going for some strolls. Ruth and I went for a walk up around Green Park, a business park near the M4 that opened in the late 1990s but latterly has had some residential development added. It was originally rumoured that a new railway station might open there, but to date this has never happened and I don’t know how likely it is. According to this, plans were approved in 2015, but I’m not aware that construction has ever begun. As the name suggests, Green Park’s buildings all have green credentials and there’s a central lake, the Longwater, which has evidently been designed as a bit of a habitat for birdies etc.

Office building at Green Park

Went for a walk with Ray around Maidenhead on the 29th Dec, taking in some of the new riverside development by York Stream, evidently part of the Waterways Restoration Project. York Stream used to be little more than a ditch, though I remember Auntie Barbara having a bit of a carry-on re how the water had been drawn off by the Jubilee River project. Unsure what Babs would think of the latest development. To my mind, it’s quite a big improvement and definitely makes that end of town a bit snazzier.

We did a bit of a circuit and then walked back up around some of the smart roads to the west of the town centre, including spotting this striking house 'Kynam' on Boyn Hill Avenue – one to preserve, though heaven knows whether it will be.

'Kynam', Boyn Hill Avenue

Further along Boyn Hill Avenue we passed 'Brocket', an Arts and Crafts-influenced early 20th century house that was until recently a Pupil Referral Unit - not sure what's going on with it now.

'Brocket', Boyn Hill Avenue

On New Year’s Eve Ruth and I popped into House of Pine and Oak in Caversham and inexplicably purchased a new dining room table and chairs. Well, Ruth did. My new Habitat set at the flat is MY table and chairs. As at the time of writing, we’ve had it for a couple of weeks (delivery was somewhat slow) and it’s very smart.

Met up with Claire at the Jolly Anglers on New Year's Day afternoon, though it was rather a sombre gathering as one of her friends had just died.

The week after the New Year, Ruth and I went back down to Wales to spend a few more days with Mum and Dad. Did the walk up Blorenge on 3rd January, Ruth's birthday, followed by tea at the Angel Hotel. The next day Mum treated us to lunch at the Chapel café - never been there before but very nice, if artsy. On the Friday Ruth got the train back to Reading while I drove back to Milton Keynes.

The Chapel on Market Street, Abergavenny

Judith greeted me on the Monday by saying I looked relaxed. Perhaps should take a fortnight off more often.

Autumn snippets

A rundown of activity since the last blog post:

September

Mind Body Spirit festival

 

Caffe Chai, Warwick

Few hours spent at the Mind Body Spirit Wellbeing Festival at the NEC on 12 September. I had acquired two reduced-price tickets via Amazon Local thinking it might be a bit of a laugh. Ray obligingly said he would come with me – perhaps feeling morally obligated after postponing a get-together the previous Saturday to take his dad to a football match – and offered to drive, so we set off early and took a detour into Warwick where we found a café for breakfast. Here I am outside it looking somewhat simple.

We arrived at the NEC – my first visit; main impression was of acres of car parks, that, cheekily, charge quite an expensive parking fee. The ‘festival’ itself was OK, though in a rather cramped arena. I tried to book in for a meditation session that was already booked up. We sat listening to some live singing for a while. Feeling I should try out one of the various sessions on offer, I decided to have a psychic reading – costing £30, as did all the ‘readings’ on offer; I’m quite surprised I paid for it – and foolishly took the first psychic that was free, an angel card reader named Rani. Can’t say I felt the 15 minutes was worth the money, but didn’t have the balls to ask for a refund, though the booker-in had told me that I could do so if I didn’t feel the reading had helped me. Rani dealt various cards and made a series of mainly inaccurate suggestions about me (Rani: “I feel you’re the sort of person others come to with their problems”; Me: “No, not really”), a series of banal observations based on things I had just told her, and displayed a startling lack of any psychic ability throughout. (When I mentioned having some discussions with my partner currently about what to do with our house, Rani responded with a suggestion about “him” – “Ah, she didn’t work that out then?” Ray scoffed over lunch). Left the reading when my time was up thinking I should have had my aura photographed instead.

What are angel cards anyway? According to Wikipedia they fall under the category of ‘OH cards’, though whether that stands for anything I’ve no idea. They seem to have their enthusiastic adherents, such as this woman quoted in an online forum re angel cards I found on a Google search:

“I truely [sic] believe in Angels too - especially when I have lost things I ask the Arc Angel Chamuelle for help in finding things … Also when I am feeling low I just talk to the Angels and within minutes see a single white feather so I know they are around us.”

The Hatton flight

This woman on Netmums (not my usual port of call for anything; it just came up in a Google search) says “I recently had my cards read, using Angel cards, and couldn't believe how accurate they were”. There you go then. There seem to be plenty available via Amazon, for example these, featuring a quite masculine-looking hunk of angel on the cover.

After having enough of the festival we retraced our steps towards Warwick and had lunch at the Hatton Arms, a large and quite smart pub near the Grand Union Canal. After lunch we walked down to the nearby Hatton Locks and had a look at the impressive flight. According to this history, the stretch of water that hosts the locks was the Warwick & Birmingham canal when it opened in 1799, part of a chain of eight canals connecting London and the Midlands. The Grand Union Canal Company took over the entire stretch in 1929 and did some modernizing in the form of widening the locks to allow boats to double up and traffic to thereby pass through more quickly.

Birth of Emily

Gail and Rob’s baby, Emily Charlotte Joyce, was born in early September. We visited Gail in the RBH the day after Emily was born and then again at home around a week later, when these pictures were taken. Emily has an insane shock of dark hair, which is very cute. 

Ruth actually had an hour alone with her a week or so ago while Gail went to a dental appointment, and apparently did manage to give her a bottle, but escaped having to change a nappy.

OpenHouse London

 

Alexandra Road estate

London OpenHouse weekend on 19-20 September and I had been determined to go this year, having missed out the last couple of years. Got over my moaning at the fact that you now have to pay for the hard copy catalogue of what’s on offer, and we bought one.

Inevitably with these things you end up not being able to pack in as many things as you think you’ll be able to. I had been keen for the last few years to see the Alexandra Road estate in Camden and go on the tour they offer of the interior of one of the flats, so we headed up there as our first port of call. When we arrived there was already quite a substantial queue for the flat tour, moving very slowly as they were only allowing four in at a time (due to the flat’s compactness) and evidently more people had turned up than the OH volunteers had expected, as they eventually started issuing people with timed tickets and asking us to come back later. We went off to have the tour of the estate garden that was on offer, and then returned to the flat an hour or so later, when, thankfully, we were admitted. Beautiful and well designed little space with a lovely balcony area that felt more like a little courtyard garden. The flat open to the public was evidently one that had had few changes made to it – the guide did say that a lot of the flats have had their interiors altered, but that there’s an attempt at clamping down on this with one chap in trouble currently for making some changes he wasn’t supposed to.

The estate was listed Grade II* in 1993, apparently the first post-war housing estate to be listed. Neave Brown, the architect, is distinguished by having had all his UK work listed, which seems incredible for a modernist architect. Go Neave. Though apparently he didn’t work in the UK again (he’s American) after Alexandra Road, thanks to the public enquiry into the project following its completion because it had cost so much.

Lunch outside at Poem

Bunhill Energy Centre

After spending more time than we’d planned to at AR because of the length of the wait, we sought out lunch nearby and settled on Poem, on the corner of Abbey Road and Boundary Road, where we had an OK light lunch. After this, we made our way over to the City area to visit Ruth’s choice, the Bunhill Heat and Power Energy Centre, a weeny little place doing all sorts of good things with energy in a way that I didn’t properly understand, probably through not being quite as interested as I should be. It opened in 2012 and supplies energy to three nearby estates.

At Salvador & Amanda

Returned to London on 26 September for celebrations of my university friend Helen’s 40th birthday. Ruth and I met Helen and seven or eight other people at Brown’s on St Martin’s Lane for afternoon tea – arranged to suit people who couldn’t stay out for an evening meal – then most of us went on for cocktails and dinner at the nearby Salvador & Amanda, a cellar restaurant on Great Newport Street. There was some disappointment with afternoon tea, mainly around the slowness of the service – though Ruth and I have enjoyed two pre-theatre dinners at that branch of Brown’s and not noticed any problems – but the dinner was nice and cellars are always atmospheric.

October

My digital life

Since early October am now studying my fourth OU module, this time the Level 1 module My digital life. Very interesting so far; it’s a broad-based module with a bit of programming, a bit of HTML and XML, a bit of (moderately) technical detail on networks and wireless communications, and no doubt other stuff to come. Am keeping a somewhat intermittent study blog on the OU's student blog area. Students are supposed to keep 'learning journals' but I find all that frankly a bit tedious. I consider myself to have done well if I spend time studying in the evenings after work, never mind then writing about it.

Discretionary increment

Pleased/smug in October to receive a merit award from the OU for the second year running. A certain number of these are made available to each unit every year as a way of rewarding specified individuals' performance. Judith handed me my letter with some kind words about the past year’s efforts. The additional increment on the pay scale doesn’t amount to a lot of extra money, but it’s better than a slap in the face.

Outing with Clarks

Went over to Maidenhead on 3 October and had lunch with Ray’s parents at Maidenhead Conservative Club. It was some years since I’d been there and I remembered the place as fairly dingy and thick with cigarette smoke, but it appeared much brighter and pleasanter on this occasion, no doubt substantially due to the smoking ban but I think also it might have had a coat of paint. Had a pleasant lunch with Ray senior and Carol and we then drove over to Hurley Riverside Park, where Ray’s sister Sharon now lives with her boyfriend Keith. Lovely setting; we admired Sharon’s garden and Carol, Sharon and I went for a walk down to the river, where I introduced them to the term ‘gongoozling’. Sharon and Keith have apparently been having issues with a mildly lunatic neighbour, which hopefully will be resolved soon.

Boat trip

Ruth and I were both pleased to have our first trip out on Ray’s boat for some time on 10 October. We went eastwards down the river as far as Sonning and moored up on the side of the river away from the path, where we had a lovely and leisurely breakfast. We passed the red spoon sculpture that Uri Geller had had erected by the Thames Path prior to his recent departure for Israel (audacious behaviour) - I attempted to take a picture of it, but there was plant life in the way, plus a number of other people on the path also taking pictures of it. Shortly after the spoon's installation, questions arose as to whether it had planning permission and a rude message was found taped to it. It then disappeared altogether, to be replaced with an actual bent spoon. It later turned out Uri himself had requested its removal, suspecting, quite probably correctly, that it wouldn't get planning permission. Geller's parting shot to the local council appears to have been "You can take my spoon, but you'll never be able to bend my creative freedom." Stirring stuff.

View of spoon through the trees

After breakfast we continued down river as far as Shiplake Lock, before turning round and returning to the marina. Ray has decided for the moment to pass up the prospect of moving to Enslow and is staying at Thames & Kennet for the time being. He has some grand refurb plans for the winter, including replacing his current cassette toilet with a pump out toilet, partly as this should prove easier for the klutzier visitor (e.g., me) to operate.  

November (first bit of)

Parents in MK

Tree Cathedral

Mum and Dad came for a visit the first weekend in November, Dad’s first to my Wolverton flat. I had carefully reserved them a space with my car in the Electrolux parking area – parking issues at Wolverton Park being the subject of a good deal of ranting on the Facebook group lately – and done a token tidy up. The Saturday was ushered in with possibly the worst weather I’ve seen since living here – lashing rain and really quite strong wind – and I was wondering slightly nervously what I would do with them for the afternoon if we couldn’t go outside, hoping not to be reduced to visiting the National Badminton Museum. We stalled for time once they arrived by having some lunch, but Dad, in a somewhat unusual display of optimism, thought we should go out anyway and perhaps it would clear up. Drove them (through increasingly heavy rain; asked at one point whether there was anything they wanted in John Lewis) to the Peace Pagoda car park and parked up, and we walked to the Pagoda and admired it briefly, by which point the rain was, thankfully, easing off.

I was mindful of not planning too long a walk, in deference to Dad’s recent bout of pneumonia, but he seemed up for a bit of a stroll so we walked past the Japanese temple and had a bit of a stroll around the garden, before carrying on to the bird hide on the south bit of North Willen Lake near the V10, where Mum and Dad had a sit down and a peruse of far-off birds, before concluding that it was a bit pointless as they’d forgotten their binoculars. We continued and had a brief visit to the Tree Cathedral – sun had come out by this point – before returning to the car and my flat. In the evening, we caught a bus into Stony Stratford and went for a couple of drinks at The Vaults before going for a nice dinner at the Calcutta. The next morning we went for a post-breakfast walk along the canal as far as the aqueduct, before retracing steps to my flat. After a brief sandwich lunch at Buskers they set off back to Wales.

Near the Peace Pagoda we noted the memorial of the Rev. Seiji Handa, with a small photo and a number of flowers. We couldn't really tell who he was - other than presumably a monk at the temple - but he would appear to have been this chap. What an unfortunate way to die.

On a more tranquil note - and hopefully no lawnmowers in sight - there's a brief commentary-free video about the Peace Pagoda and Buddhist temple here.  

Book Group

Got to go to my first Book Group meeting in a while on 13 November, as Claire M had kindly prevailed on the rest of the group to host the meeting on a Friday so that I could come. 6 out of the 8 of us (missing Lesley, and Sarah who hasn’t yet rejoined the group following the birth of her baby) met in Claire’s cosy back room to discuss Barbara Taylor’s ‘The Last Asylum’. Only Helen, Ali and myself had actually made any headway with reading the book, so it was a bit of a limited discussion, but we agreed that psychoanalysis is a bit of a mystery, and certainly can only have been the province of a rich (and leisured) few.

The book's cover photo is of the scarily long corridor at Friern Hospital in Barnet, the asylum referred to in the book's title where Taylor spent time as an in-patient in the 1980s. The building's now been converted into a luxury flat development called Princess Park Manor, which manages to avoid mentioning on its 'History' page that it was once a mental hospital. No clue whether they left the corridor intact.

Rambling for Pleasure

On the Sunday of that weekend I attempted to drag Ruth for a walk out of ‘Rambling for Pleasure around Reading’. I’d picked a walk around Arborfield with the sweetener of visiting Gail and Rob afterwards and then possibly going for a cheese toastie at Dobbies (that being about as grand as my gestures get). Entirely through my inept navigation, we started badly by walking quite a way down the wrong road, unsurprisingly being unable to find the entrance to Pudding Lane and having to retrace our steps to the Bull roundabout, where we picked up the correct road. As we’d used up a bit of time doing this, I cut the route short and we took a route back past Arborfield church, which appeared veritably packed with worshippers (Gail later told us that Arborfield's congregation is of a somewhat happy-clappy persuasion, including apparently sticking name badges on people when they arrive for a service) and thence slightly hazardously along the B3030 Sindlesham Road for a stretch before arriving back at the village.

St Bartholomew's, Arborfield

We paid a brief visit to Rob and Gail and said good morning to Emily, who was dozing peacefully in her baby carrier when we arrived, but was duly lifted up and passed around. In a laudable attempt to share Emily out, Gail whipped her off Ruth’s lap, where she’d just settled down relatively peacefully, and put her onto mine, where she perhaps understandably set up a lusty bawl and was duly removed, to be walked soothingly up and down the hallway.

We had a brief lunch in a crowded Dobbies, and may have bought some stuff but I forget now.

Henley

Went over to Henley for a few hours the following Saturday – I’ve hardly been at all the past few years but it is indeed a pleasant place for a wander around. Not sure whether my recent low iron levels were making me feel the cold more than usual, but it appeared bl**dy cold – we did go for a short stroll along the river but even I couldn’t face spending too much time on it. We spent most of the time having a wander around the shops and the Christmas market, and had a pleasant lunch at The Argyll. We went into Tudor House Antiques – don’t think I’d ever been inside while living in Henley, probably because neither Ray nor I care for antiques, but as Ruth likes them we went in and passed a mildly excruciating (at least from my point of view) 15 minutes or so staring at old stuff and banging my head on beams. Lingered for a while in Central Home, a new arrival in Henley, where I coveted a few things but didn’t buy them. Ruth bought a ring.

Must rest awhile before bringing this account up to date, as I am weary and must stitch a while on my sampler.

Signing off; breakfast; boat-building

The main triumph of the last week has been obtaining approval and subsequently a completion certificate from Reading Borough Council Building Control for Ray’s re-roofing of the house and fitting of a Velux window. We were pretty sure that we had done the necessary in terms of stuff BC had asked us to do, but you can never be sure until sign-off. Now, if I ever do in future get to the stage of compiling a HIP, the certificate can slot right in. Grateful to little R for doing a good enough job during a difficult time.

Weekend got off to a good start with breakfast with Ray at the lovely Palmieri’s in Maidenhead. Fabulous coffee (had two cups) and probably the nicest ‘full English’ I’ve had – I don’t normally order full Englishes in cafes/hotels as I’m wary of being presented with a sea of grease, if I’m really unlucky, swimming in an additional sea of baked beans (which I like, but not for breakfast). However, Palmieri’s slight Italian twist on the full English was perfect, and included some perfect little charred cherry tomatoes. Ray’s baked beans were served in a separate little bowl, rather than on the plate, which was a nice touch. Palmieri’s is out of the town centre (probably no bad thing – for a presumably wealthy town, Maidenhead has a particularly drab and uninspiring town centre, although there does appear to be a regeneration planned) but it seemed to have plenty of custom when we were there at 9am, so I hope it thrives.

Then we trolled off up the M40 and out past Banbury to see the progress of the construction of Ray’s narrowboat. I was reassured to see that it does appear to be being constructed of solid-looking steel, rather than the pieces of coloured wood glued together that I had imagined.

Finished the day with a lovely walk around Bisham Woods to take full advantage of the weather. The going would have been tough if it had been wet as the ground had been well churned up by horses – much muttering from Ray about horses ruining footpaths. Luckily it was dry but still a risk of spraining ankles in ruts created by hooves. We didn’t actually see any of the huge beasts – perhaps they’ve moved on to churn up pastures new. In fact we didn’t see anybody at all, which was strange given the lovely weather.
At Book Group this weekI was slightly startled at the amount of hatred directed at our book for the month, Danny Wallace's Yes Man. I had regarded it as an appealing piece of light entertainment but I seemed to be alone in this.