Walk around Hurley and Temple, 6.9 miles

12 August

Bit of retrospective walk blogging.

Picked Ray up from the marina early and drove to Marlow. Parked in the car park off Institute Road and walked up to Bill’s on West Street, where Ray treated me to brunch as an early birthday present. After stuffing ourselves we waddled off down Portlands Alley to Pound Lane. Turned down Lower Pound Lane and walked for a while past what seemed to be the development of a flood relief scheme. As we passed the private house Pens Place Ray speculated as to whether there might once have been a larger and older house of that name nearby, but I couldn’t find anything on a Google search.

Reached the river and paused for a while for Ray to point out some planting across at Temple Marina that a friend of his had done, plus the new house owned by the marina owners. Walked on past Temple Lock and over the elegant footbridge, where Ray paused to ring his sister Sharon, who lives in the residential bit of Hurley Riverside Park with her partner Keith, to see if she was available for visitors – Sharon is currently laid up with her ankle in plaster following a fall down her decking steps. To give her time to get sorted we had a pleasant stroll around Hurley, including walking a short way down a footpath leading off the high street.

Old road from Hurley to Temple

This piece has some interesting stuff about an old tunnel running from the Olde Bell to the Priory. Didn’t spot the entrance gate pillars of the former driveway to Temple House referred to – will have to go back and have another look. The former Temple House looks to have been a big old pile judging by this photo. There’s now a new-build (though olde-style) house called Temple House next to Temple Marina, apparently formerly owned by the marina owners according to Ray but now sold as a private house. Rightmove picture here.

After leaving Sharon and Keith's, we walked along the old road - Temple Lane - leading from Hurley to the village of Temple - apparently this was an actual road for cars at one point though I haven't been able to find out when it was closed to traffic. Just before reaching Temple, some fellow walkers pointed out the jolliness that somebody had added to these slabs.

We continued on through Temple village to join the road that runs off the roundabout through Bisham and over the suspension bridge into Marlow. We had tea and cake at Satollo before returning to Caversham.

Ray on Marlow Bridge

Route below.

Here's the pace/elevation graph, though being mainly near the river there wasn't much elevation to speak of.

Walk, Marlow to Caversham, 16.2 miles

15 April

This walk was intended to be a serious test of my fitness for the upcoming trek distance. Again Ruth surprised me by offering to come, though she seems to be suffering from hip and knee pain after a certain number of miles, so I suggested that she dropped out halfway and went home if the distance was too much. Decided on a route along the Thames from Marlow to Henley, then across country via Harpsden and Binfield Heath back to Caversham (going the whole way back to Reading along the Thames Path would have taken the walk to 18 miles or so).

We took the Arriva 800 bus (an excellent service) at 0916, arriving in Marlow just before 10 am. Had only a brief wobble while walking down the high street to the river when Ruth tried to veer off into India Jane, but I managed to catch her in time before any shopping started. Set off westwards along the Thames Path, crossing the river at Temple Footbridge. At Hurley, the path crosses briefly back to an island in the middle of the river, where we stopped for a welcome cup of tea and ate the chipolatas and hard-boiled eggs we'd brought with us. Continued on past the lock and back across another bridge to the south (Berkshire) bank. Onwards past the collection of bungalows off Black Boy Lane - these form an interesting contrast with most of the properties along the river banks - and the posher houses at Frogmill.

A bit further on the path crossed in front of Culham Court and into trees before emerging on Aston Lane by The Flower Pot. Here we continued along Remenham Lane, rejoining the Thames Path at Remenham. Continued on into Henley, which was the halfway point, and sat on a bench by The Angel to eat some sandwiches. Ruth decided she was OK to continue, so after a visit to the public conveniences at Mill Meadows we turned away from the Thames Path and headed out of the town via Harpsden Road and Harpsden Way. Passed the gates of the 13th-century Harpsden Court, which appears to have been for sale last year. Puffed our way up Chalk Hill and then, after dodging traffic and golfers from Henley Golf Club, past Mays Green to Binfield Heath, passing The Bottle & Glass, which Ruth looked at wistfully.

Thames near Henley	Gates of Harpsden Court
Walking through Harpsden	Bluebells in woodland near Binfield Heath

We stopped briefly - our third and last stop - at a picnic table in Binfield Heath to have a drink and eat some sweet stuff, then tramped the last few miles via Dunsden Green and Kiln Road down into Caversham.

Map of the route:

Here's the elevation and pace graph. Chalk Hill is the steep climb at about time 3:45.

Feet a bit tired afterwards, and we did little that evening other than flop around and order a Thai takeaway, but on the whole few after effects. Am reasonably encouraged. It's still only half the bloody trek distance though.

(Most of ) September round-up

With the intention of going to more constructive and highbrow events, I bought a ticket for the National Secular Society’s ‘Secularism 2016’ conference on the first Saturday of this month. Due to early morning rail chaos – arrived at Reading station to find all trains to Paddington cancelled due to some sort of signalling problem – I arrived in London much later than I’d intended due to having to take the South West Trains service to Waterloo instead, which takes almost three times as long due to meandering through most of Surrey and south-west London. Resigned myself to missing the morning sessions – though frankly I probably could have made them if I’d made sufficient effort – I walked up from Waterloo to the conference venue, via a visit to the Early Music Shop, which I’d identified from an internet search on the train as selling recorders and recorder music. Have recently decided to take up the recorder, as I have a bit of a yen to play a musical instrument again – I played recorder a bit as a child and teenager but was only ever self-taught, but have vague ambitions this time of finding a teacher and taking some ABRSM grade exams. We’ll see if that comes off.

The Early Music Shop is a charming place on Denmark Street, just off Charing Cross Road. The shop is on the first floor and you have to ring a bell to be let in. Denmark Street has a number of music shops but early musical instruments are evidently a bit of a niche interest – most music shops give over the bulk of their space to guitars and keyboards. The EMS was crammed with recorders and other old-style instruments, along with masses of sheet music. I bought a book of recorder music aimed at Grades 1-2, plus a new brush. Have since bought myself a brand new descant, an Aulos 205, purchased, I’m ashamed to say, not from the EMS but from Amazon. Here it is on the right next to my old cream Hohner recorder. The tone of the Aulos is indeed nicer so hopefully it will be fun to play.

After leaving the Early Music Shop I walked up to the conference venue, the Royal National Hotel in Bloomsbury. The hotel is a fairly dispiriting building on Bedford Way with a central courtyard and various cafes and restaurants adjoining. Pic nicked from TripAdvisor.

I registered for the conference and took a seat in time to hear the keynote speaker, one Jacques Berlinerblau, giving a talk called ‘How to be Secular’ (he has apparently written a book of the same name). Berlinerblau, an American academic, talked mainly about the state of secularism in the US, including how secularism is hampered in the US by being synonymous in many people’s minds with atheism (it’s probably hampered fairly similarly in the UK). He discussed the ambiguity in the US constitution re the separation of church and state, and showed [then Senator] John F Kennedy’s 1960 address in which he argued that the separation of church and state should be absolute (though JFK was admittedly coming from the perspective of being a Roman Catholic hoping to be elected president, so was presumably influenced by a – reasonable enough - desire for his religion to be considered irrelevant to his presidency) and that “no church or church school [should be] granted any public funds or political preference”. Sad that that democratic hope is a long way from being true in the UK – I’m not sure about the US as I’m reasonably sure Berlinerblau noted that state-funded faith schools are in fact illegal in the States. Berlinerblau said a good deal of common sense stuff about picking battles, noting as an example the pragmatic impossibility of removing “In God We Trust” from the US dollar bill.

After the keynote there was a tea break, during which I rather shamefully decided I’d had enough and went for a cup of tea and a KitKat in the neighbouring Blooms Pizza Café before getting a bus back to Paddington (signalling problem now thankfully solved). Must build up more stamina.

The following afternoon Ruth and I went over to Arborfield for Ruth’s niece Emily’s first birthday tea. Emily is now an adorable little blonde munchkin of a child and much time was spent watching her play with her presents, crawl under tables etc. She had a chocolate birthday cake in the shape of a hedgehog.

Emily pointing at her cake

Persuaded Ruth up to MK again for the weekend of 10th/11th. On the Friday evening we booked dinner at Buskers again, where the musician of the night was the lovely Jausme, playing an instrument new to me called the Kankles. She was accompanied by a cellist, which proved a very evocative combination – much of Jausme’s music is apparently influenced by the forests of her native Lithuania. Here’s a clip of somebody playing one. The food, as before at Buskers, was less memorable than the music, but it was nice enough – I quite enjoyed the Moroccan lamb dish I had though Ruth complained her chicken breast was dry.

The music shop portion of Buskers seems to be becoming ever smaller to allow for the expansion of the café/restaurant function – so I hope it remains in some capacity as that was surely part of the original point.

I continued the musical theme on the Saturday night by booking us in to an event at St Mary & St Giles Church in Stony Stratford that formed part of the Willis Pipe Organ Festival being held over that weekend. The event, the 'Saturday Night Silent Movie', featured organist Donald MacKenzie improvising (apparently) a live soundtrack to the 1923 Harold Lloyd (silent) film Safety Last! (I didn’t particularly recognize the film from the name, but it’s the one where he dangles off a clock face.)

MacKenzie apparently specializes in the art of improvised accompaniments to silent films – something of a niche specialism. The organ is not my favourite instrument – perhaps too associated with church – and I probably wouldn’t attend an evening of pure organ music, but had been amused by the prospect of the organ/silent movie combo. In the event MacKenzie played a few solo pieces before the interval, which I sat through politely, and after the interval we watched the movie. The accompaniment was certainly pretty good, in that after a while I forgot it wasn’t part of the film’s soundtrack. The film was entertaining enough, though the latter part, where Lloyd’s character scales the front of a building, I found more tense than funny. It was very well done though.

The booklet we got on entry has endless text about the organ restoration funding, so obviously a big thing for the church.

The following weekend we went up to Open House London on the Saturday. This year I had managed to install the very useful, albeit not free, app in advance, and we had idly flicked through the guide – Ruth had marked a few places in Ealing, I think just because it came early in the alphabetical list of London boroughs, and as I’d never been to Ealing we decided to go there, and agreed that it would be sensible to visit several places within easy reach of each other.

Bluebell House

Ruth vetoed getting a stopper from Reading to Ealing Broadway on the grounds that it would be quicker to get a fast train into Paddington and then get the tube out to Ealing. It wasn’t. However, we did finally arrive, and walked through pleasant streets to the first property we’d selected, Bluebell House on Waldemar Avenue. BH is a gorgeous self-build in what was formerly the garden of the large Edwardian house the owners previously lived in. Evidently the large old house was becoming too much for them but they didn’t want to move away from Ealing, so sold off the house and a portion of the garden and built their own place. Fabulous idea. I tried to abstract away from how well off they must be, as they seemed a very pleasant older couple, despite the husband being so posh he pronounced “off” as “orf”. I was impressed at the trouble they’d taken to work around the mature trees already in their garden, even where this placed restrictions on the new house. The name apparently comes from the bluebells formerly in the garden that were evidently re-planted on the roof of the house, though the owner did confess that only a small patch had survived.

Heath Lodge

After leaving Bluebell House, we walked a bit of a way to Heath Lodge, a stunning development of modern terraced houses. They’re larger than they look in the street level photo, as you go in and then downstairs to the kitchen and living area, and a small courtyard back garden.

After leaving Heath Lodge, we decided that we fancied lunch and established that we were in Hanwell. At first glance, Hanwell appears something of an armpit of a place: after walking along what appeared to be the main high street area along the Uxbridge Road and not seeing anywhere we particularly fancied eating lunch, we turned left into Boston Road past some drunks and walked along that. I had just suggested locating the nearest bus stop and getting a bus to frankly anywhere else, when we stumbled across the W7 Emporium, which looked more our sort of place. Indeed it was, though it was fairly busy so we were obliged to brave the outdoor space – luckily the rain held off.

After lunch, we took a somewhat lengthy bus journey back east to White City to see the Sustainable Drainage Scheme (SuDS) at Bridget Joyce Square. This sort of thing is more Ruth’s cup of tea than mine though I do of course think it’s all a very good thing. The scheme is right in the middle of the 1930s White City Estate – we both wandered in thinking we were looking for the entrance to some sort of treatment plant, and stood for a while in front of a primary school in a pedestrianised open space with some pleasant planting, before being accosted by an enthusiastic chap asking if we were there for the Open House. As he started talking we realized we were in fact standing in the middle of the scheme. The chap talking to us had evidently been one of the team involved in the design, and his story of how the scheme was thought through was quite interesting, including how it had to have some discernible benefits to the local community through the creation of an ‘urban public park’. We walked the ‘wiggly wall’ on our way out – well, you have to.

Felt distinctly sorry for the Open House volunteer on duty at Bridget Joyce Square: it wasn't a particularly warm day, the school was apparently unexpectedly locked and visitors had not evidently been too plentiful, so he must have had a bit of a thin time standing around for much of the day.

Temple Lock

Went over to Marlow on the Sunday for a walk with Ray. At his suggestion we took the train over, for a novelty; I hadn’t taken the branch line to Marlow from Maidenhead for some years. Ray tried to look as we were leaving Maidenhead for signs of the former Maidenhead Boyne Hill station, but we couldn’t see any. After arriving in Marlow we walked to the high street, crossed over and walked through Court Gardens to the river path. Walked along as far as Temple Lock, where we sat for a while, before taking the path away from the river past Lowgrounds Farm and the Harleyford Estate, where Ray used to work and where I lived with him for a time in the mid-1990s. While walking up Harleyford Lane we were passed by Craig, now the head greenkeeper at the golf club, who stopped for a chat with Ray. We walked back into Marlow and had another nice lunch at The Botanist.

Since our visit to Marlow, some idiot in a 30-tonne truck seems to have knackered the historic suspension bridge, which has a 3-tonne weight limit.

Very pleased to manage to make a Book Group meeting at Ali’s on Thursday 22nd, as I’d booked leave the following day to attend an appointment locally (see next paragraph). Ali spoke eloquently about the book, Sarah Hall’s The Wolf Border, which seems very well written though I haven’t yet quite finished it. Caught up with the other Claire, who is due to give birth to her first child in November.

Ruth and I reported to the Henley offices of The Head Partnership on the Friday morning to meet one of their solicitors to start setting up our wills. We’d been putting this off for some time, partly through concern that it might lead to an enormous row, but actually we’ve so far got through the process quite civilly. The meeting was quite informative, and we managed to fit in some discussion of the amendments we want to our Deed of Trust on the house. After the meeting we went to the River and Rowing Museum café – now called The Quince Tree – for lunch.

To finish: Runderwear. I keep seeing ads for this on Facebook. I rarely if ever run, though I work with people who do.

Boat trip; assorted London trips; Hoppa Bag Crisis

Set off on Saturday 13^th for our eagerly anticipated boat trip down the Thames (photos here). Ruth and I arrived at the marina laden with food and wine which we piled onto a trolley and then wheeled noisily down the pontoon. Ray extricated us from his berth surprisingly smoothly and then we were off for a lovely meander down the river and, from Shiplake onwards, a nice rubberneck at posh riverside properties, which is always fun. We lunched on the move on pasties and gazpacho – I thought this an acceptable if probably little-known combination, though Ruth spurned the gazpacho, being of the “Eeuww it’s cold” mentality when it comes to soup. We found the river surprisingly quiet on the Saturday, at least as far as Marsh Lock, just upstream of Henley and a popular spot for a stroll, when I looked up with a mouthful of pasty to discover we had an audience of people apparently entranced by the sight of boats going through locks. A big cruiser was beckoned into the lock by the lockkeeper after us and I was interested to see how keen they are to give narrowboats a wide berth (that whole fibreglass vs. several tons of steel thing). The weather stayed OK and we eventually moored up just short of Bourne End, sometime after 5pm. Had a brief token stroll to stretch legs and spent a pleasant evening eating and drinking.

Sunday was a bit busier and more eventful. Enjoyed the meander back towards Marlow, snapping several of the grand houses sited high above the river on the south side, including one whose riverside lawn Ray apparently maintains – as the main part of the garden looked an almost sheer drop from the house I’ve no idea how they get the necessary machinery down there. Things became more eventful at Marlow lock, the deepest lock on our trip at a drop of 7’ 1”; the others ranged from Sonning at 5’ 4” to Hurley at a piddling 3’ 5”. Hardly worth it really. Once we were secured in at Marlow, a barge alongside us and at least one cruiser behind, Ruth was warned to hold tight to the rope as the sluice gates were opened as apparently “things can get a bit rough”. Things did indeed, with a rush of quite impressive white water; as we were preparing to leave the lockkeeper saw fit to tell us that Marlow’s the roughest sluice on the Thames. How exciting.

Not long out of Marlow lock and heading downstream towards the suspension bridge, we noted a couple of rowers ahead of us, one of whom inexplicably decided to row towards us as we drew closer. The inevitable happened and yes, it upset her more than us. She was duly retrieved by the guy in charge of the rowing who dragged her off to the side of the river for, hopefully, a bit of a stern chat.

While waiting at Hurley we were hailed by Ray’s current employer Laurence, who owns a Venetian water taxi moored at Freebody’s cute boatyard. They followed us upstream as far as Henley, where we moored up and Ray went to have a cup of tea with them, while Ruth and I nipped into the River & Rowing Museum to see whether the café was still as nice as it was during those mornings eight years ago when I was supposed to be writing my thesis. We had a pleasant lunch and then set off again, finally arriving back at the marina around 6pm. Very civilised.

Discovered from Judith this week that she and her daughter had apparently taken part in an open water swimming contest at Marlow the weekend following our trip. We did see a few women in wetsuits in the river near Bourne End on the Saturday – my initial conclusion was that they were just mad, but with hindsight perhaps they were practising.

Spent 15-17 August on a SAS course at StayAhead Training, around the corner from Barbican tube. Ruth and I travelled in together on the Monday and had breakfast in the Central Café, just opposite the Shelter Building where her offices are. Returned to the café on Day 3 of the course to meet Hannah for more coffee and pains au chocolat – had ordered two of the latter intending one to be for her, but as she is of the (odd, obviously) breed of people who claim not to be able to consume food before about 11am, I ended up eating most of both, so should probably curb the pastry for a bit. The course itself was a bit too intensive for my liking, though I guess I should take comfort from the fact that it was intended for people with at least six months’ SAS programming experience. People in the office had commiserated with me for not managing to book onto a course at the SAS headquarters near Marlow, as apparently you get a good spread at lunch there. We didn’t get lunch at the London site but we did get issued daily with a quite generous £10 of Luncheon Vouchers (hadn’t known these still existed) – bought Ruth lunch with them on two of the days and used the rest up on grocery shopping in Waitrose.

Ruth and I went for a birthday meal on Tuesday evening at Café Rouge, where we had a surprisingly poor steak. Salad and fries were nice though. Had booked the Thursday and Friday as leave - on the Thursday, met Ray early for a divine-as-ever coffee and bacon sandwich at Julia’s Meadow then went for a quick browse around the shops which, inexplicably, resulted in my arriving back at the house laden with bags. On the Friday, Ruth and I took the train up to London and visited the BP Portrait Award 2011 exhibition at the National Portrait Gallery. After a brief lunch we wandered over to Covent Garden, where we spent a short while aimlessly mooching before both acknowledging that neither of us likes it much (too crowded and touristy). We wandered on and, completely unplanned, came across the Aram Store on Drury Lane, exclusive sellers of various iconic pieces of furniture including Jacobsen's Swan and Egg chairs. We drooled for a while and Ruth used their toilets. We then walked a way down Holborn to visit the little church of St Etheldreda in Ely Place, the oldest Roman Catholic church in London (it was taken over by the Church of England after the Reformation, but returned to the Old Faith in the nineteenth century). Afterwards, we had an early dinner at Garfunkel's¹ and an expensive drink in the Old Shades on Whitehall before going to see Max Stafford-Clark's production of Caryl Churchill's 'Top Girls' at Trafalgar Studios.

As of today, the Hoppa Bag crisis is continuing. Ruth filled three of these several weekends ago with soil and rubble resulting from digging out a large trench in the garden prior to getting some hard landscaping done. Although they are blocking the entrance to the garage, she imagined that they would be speedily collected before I next wanted to park the car in it, as previously Mr Hoppa has always been round promptly to collect the bags. On this occasion, however, despite assuring Ruth that he would be quite able to collect them from the lane at the back of the property, he has still not been to collect them despite repeated chasing. I fear they are going to have to be collected via other means – though I don’t know at the moment quite what those are going to be.

¹ Hadn't been to one of these in about 20 years. The formerly quite special salad bar didn't look to be what it used to be, so I played it safe with spicy chicken wings and garlic bread.