Last week

RIP Jeffrey Archer

The death of Jeffrey Archer prompted Mum to remind us that she and my aunt were in fact distantly related to the late novelist and former politician. Anne discovered the family connection quite a while back, in the course of her extensive family tree research. The family tree below, I assume typed up by Anne, reveals all, sort of. (As all the people named on this tree are dead, I don’t think I’m breaching anyone’s privacy by publishing it.)

I think the upshot is that Archer’s great-grandfather Richard Clibbett was the first cousin of Anne and Mum’s great-grandmother Blanche Ellery Hicks. Richard and Blanche shared a set of grandparents, William and Susannah Clibbett. Ergo, Anne, Mum and Jeffrey shared mutual great-great-great-grandparents and were therefore fourth cousins.

The late Jeffrey might perhaps have been a bit deflated at appearing fourth in a Google search of Jeffreys, behind serial killer Jeffrey Dahmer and disgraced financier Jeffrey Epstein, as well as the actor Jeffrey Dean Morgan, with whom I am not too familiar.

Comic Strip at Norden Farm

Ruth and I drove over to Norden Farm after work on Tuesday to join Ray for ‘An Evening of Comic Strip with Peter Richardson and Guest(s)’. I hadn’t expected Ruth to want to come to this, but turns out she did, so I booked an extra ticket. We had a pre-show dinner, where I had these charmingly round orange fishcakes, quite reminiscent of primary school (in fact, they were one of the more edible offerings on my primary school dinner menu, from memory).

Fishcakes

The underfilled auditorium

Richardson and Phil Cornwell appeared on stage for some reminiscences and to answer audience questions, in between screenings of four films: Four Men In a Car, selected scenes from Stella Street, a montage of clips forming a tribute to Rik Mayall, and Red Nose of Courage, the last about a clown who leaves the circus to go into politics and becomes PM John Major, getting it together with the Leader of the Opposition. Most of it rang bells, though I don’t think I’d ever seen Red Nose of Courage before. I'd forgotten all about Bad News.

There were a lot of empty seats in the theatre auditorium, which was a shame – perhaps it was a bit of a niche show, or maybe it hadn’t had enough publicity. I assume this is a standard show that Richardson does. Ray and I enjoyed it; it sounded as though the Comic Strip might have rather passed Ruth by in their original outing, but she said she'd enjoyed Four Men In A Car, albeit then felt the rest of the show dragged a bit.

A jeff with the Redway Runners

I spent Wednesday and Thursday working in the office in Milton Keynes. There was a pleasant buzz on Wednesday as there were quite a lot of people in, albeit only a handful from Data & Insights (the current name of my current team). Sorcha hadn’t been able to make it in but I had a nice chat with Sapir. Thursday was quieter but the change of scene from home was still valuable.

I was a bit wary of the likely temperatures in the office given that we have been issued with the standard annual notification of when the heating will come on but tempered by cautioning about Net Zero and the need to strike a balance. Lest we expect too toasty warm an atmosphere, Estates have issued these “helpful tips”, which include mentions of scarves, shawls and clasping a mug of hot water. Thankfully the weather has only just started to become autumnal, but I’ll be interested to see on my next visit to MK in November whether it’s now shawl weather.

As part of a plan to ease myself back into running – I’ve barely run for the last year and think I’d struggle to run a continuous 5K at the moment – I have started up “jeffing” again (alternating running and walking). Solo so far, but I was pleased to see that the Redway Runners are currently offering a jeffing session on a Wednesday evening, starting from the Westcroft District Centre car park. I mentioned it to Hai and she came along too. Hai's training needs are currently more urgent than mine as she has accidentally been successful in the ballot for next year's London Marathon.

The jeffing group

Hai and I formed the tail for most of the run, resulting in the faster runners having to “loop back” behind us to keep the group together, but I decided that there wasn’t much I could do about that. It was a useful session, around a bit of Milton Keynes I don't know at all - though it was dark by the end of the run anyway. I was slightly peeved after having gone to the trouble of digging out my Redway Runners vest, I turned out to be the only runner in uniform.

Pootle around Maidenhead

I took the train over and met up with Ray outside the station. We started off by going to a cavernous new branch of Pret a Manger on the ground floor of one of the new apartment blocks nearby. Ray had a moan about us being served hot drinks in takeaway cups when we’d paid the bloody VAT to sit down, but I managed to persuade him it had probably been inattention on the barista’s part.

People walking around with takeaway hot drinks is one of those modern customs that gets me irrationally irritated. Just sit down and drink it. I always feel there's a performative element of "Look at me, I'm so busy I don't even have time to sit down." However, I could of course be completely wrong on that.

Anyway. We then walked to Maidenhead Bridge, crossing Bridge Road via the subway and passing the Haven of Rest almshouses, apparently established by one George Herring in 1895 to house people of reduced circumstances.

The Haven of Rest almshouses

At Maidenhead Bridge, we stopped to chuckle at the continuing presence of Marlow Boat Services, now sandwiched between the bridge and a Roux brothers restaurant (which was called Roux at Skindles when it opened up, but now seems to have rebranded as Brasserie Roux). I assume the boatyard owner must have come under some pressure to sell when Skindles was demolished and the restaurant and posh new housing built, but he’s evidently held out so far. It means Roux diners get a view down onto a corrugated iron roof if they look that way. LOL.

L to R: Brasserie Roux; Marlow Boat Services; Maidenhead Bridge

We then walked up to Boulters Lock. There are two islands here, Boulter's Island and Ray Mill Island. Boulter's Island contains several private residences; Ray Mill Island is a public park. From the footbridge leading across to Ray Mill Island, you can see an abandoned ramp that once held a conveyor system that carried small boats to save them using the lock. 

Boulters Lock

Site of what was once a moving conveyor for small boats

On Ray Mill Island we went to have a look at the aviary and guinea pig enclosures. The setup appears to be at some risk of closure, though I have to say the guinea pigs’ accommodation looked decent enough to me. This sort of 'Pets Corner' facility does seem a bit of an old-fashioned anomaly; I remember that back in the 1970s there was one in the gardens of Greenham House in Newbury that we used to enjoy visiting as kids, but it's long gone now.

Blurred pic of a guinea pig having its lunch

On Ray Mill Island

We crossed Taplow Bridge to the recently redeveloped area between the Thames and the Jubilee River. The redevelopment is on the former site of Taplow Paper Mills, where Ray's dad's cousin Barbara once worked. This bit of land seems to be called Glen Island, which I hadn't known. We walked to Hall & Woodhouse where we had lunch plus a cheeky rosé. I had some surprisingly delicious crispy cauliflower bites, along with some lamb meatballs.

After lunch, we returned to the bridge and walked over to Guards Club Park, one of Ray’s favourite haunts as he fished there in his youth. After that we walked through Oldacres and turned left onto Oldfield Road, then onto the path alongside York Stream and back into town.

My crispy cauliflower, left, plus some lamb meatballs

The footbridge leading to Guards Club Island

We’d both been quite excited at the potential new bus routes available via Carousel, particularly the one between Maidenhead and Reading as that route has been poorly served by buses up until recently. I did end up taking the 127 back to Reading just to check out the route, despite having paid for the return train fare.

"Renoir and Love" with Helen

Met up with Helen to see this exhibition at the National Gallery. Helen chose it - I know little about Renoir but was happy to be enlightened.

I walked from Paddington to Trafalgar Square via the Hyde Park estate and Mayfair. Saw this genuine horse manure in Hyde Park Gardens Mews – I always find it amusing to think of horses in these posh little streets, but of course that’s what they were originally for.

My route. At one point on the walk I turned left by mistake and ended up on Oxford Street, which I turned off again as soon as possible. I enjoyed Oxford Street in my twenties but emphatically not now.

My walking route

Evidence of horses

Walking through Hyde Park

In Mount Street Gardens, I saw this very impressive Canary Island date palm.

Passed the RA, which was advertising the Richard Dadd exhibition that Mum and I are going to see in a couple of weeks.

The Royal Academy

Went in to this shop on Haymarket. It was, as expected, full of K-Pop merch (K-Merch?), with some Hello Kitty on the side. I had thought Hello Kitty was Japanese, but I guess the shop is doing a bit of fusion. Incidentally, Hello Kitty apparently celebrated her 50th birthday in 2024.

K-Playground

My lunch

Helen and I had arranged to meet for lunch at the Prezzo on Northumberland Avenue, where we’ve met a couple of times before. In the event, Helen’s trains were a disaster and she didn’t manage to arrive until about 1:30pm, giving her just time for a drink. Evidently Southeastern Railway are doing some works and there’s a lot of disruption. She had generously told me to go ahead and order, which was just as well as I was starving. Chomped a chicken Caesar salad and house fries.

We made our way over to the Sainsbury Wing and stood in a queue briefly, before being allowed in to the exhibition. It was pretty crowded, though less of a pain than the Samurai exhibition we went to at the British Museum back in February and it was a politer crowd on this occasion.

I was interested to learn a bit about Renoir as I know little about him. Some of the commentary indicated that his preference for happy subject matter marked him out as a bit unserious among his contemporaries. Seems a shame. I did like most of the paintings. I recognised Bal au Moulin de la Galette, on loan from the Musée d’Orsay and apparently on display in the UK for the first time.

Bal au Moulin de la Galette

I liked the flowers in Woman with a Parasol in a Garden. And was shocked to read that Study: Torso, Sunlight Effect was apparently likened by a critic in 1876 to "a mass of rotting flesh". I suppose I'd need a better understanding of art of that period to be able to make any sense of that.

Woman with a Parasol in a Garden

Study: Torso, Sunlight Effect

We had a quick look at a couple of the regular galleries. I was flagging and ready for tea and cake by this time, but my eye was caught by Nicolas Poussin’s 17th-century painting Eucharist, where the apostle on Jesus’ right appears to be having a kip.

Eucharist by Nicolas Poussin

For tea, we left the National and went across to the Café in the Crypt, where I was hoping they might have the scrummy chocolate cake they had the last time I was there, but they didn’t, so we had carrot cake. We said goodbye after that - I was happy to get away from Trafalgar Square as it seemed even busier than usual: it was partially closed off for an NFL event; additionally there was (of course) a pro-Pal demo (some white-haired respectable-looking types did appear in the café for tea and cake, sporting keffiyehs). Helen advised later that her journey home had been marginally less troublesome than the journey in.

Spa and walk at Donnington, plus some history

Friday 24 August

Ray has been a member for a while at the health club at the Donnington Valley Hotel just outside Newbury – or I should say, Donnington & Co, as it appears to have rebranded itself. He has signed me in as a guest a few times now, which is a pleasant way to spend a morning and I’ve booked in a 25-minute spa treatment each time, mostly the Scalp Ritual so far. A couple of Fridays ago we spent a morning there, had lunch (food is pretty good) and then went for a walk.

The area is of some interest to old/disused road and path geeks. The address of the hotel is Old Oxford Road. The hotel is now the main destination on this road, which carries on more or less parallel with the A339 as far as J13 of the M4, where it ends at a roundabout. There used to be a pub, the Fox & Hounds, further up from the hotel, but this is now closed as of earlier this year. It probably lost most of its passing trade a long time ago when the M4 was built and a new connecting road was built from Newbury to junction 13. Indeed, ChatGPT tells me that its fortunes were shaped by changes to the road network around Newbury:

The Street View image below shows the pub in 2024. I have a memory of it driving past it some years back (OK, a lot of years back) and it seeming in rather an out of the way place. In the late 1990s the Newbury bypass was constructed near the pub (that’s the road bridge in the distance in the Street View image), presumably adding to its difficulties by making it both out of the way and much less peaceful than it was before.

2024 Street View image of the Fox & Hounds, Donnington

Back to our walk. Ray wanted to start off by calling in at the golf club Pro Shop. So we started by walking up the road a short way and turning in by this sign to follow a road up to the golf club. He told me that Donnington Valley golf club used to be a private members’ club, but is now pay and play and is owned by the hotel.

A vibrant green tee

There’s some sort of party barn there, which was hosting a wedding that day – in fact we may have wandered through somewhere we weren’t supposed to. There’s a golfers’ bar at the back of Snelsmore House, and the pro shop is nearby, though Ray only popped in briefly in the end. The golf course was looking pretty brown and crispy, except for the greens and tees which had been kept a vibrant green.

Golfers' bar at the back of Snelsmore House

From Snelsmore House, we retraced our steps to the road and followed a footpath up behind some buildings and through some woods, to come out on the B4494 Wantage Road. The OS map appeared to show a footpath going off the other side of the road, but we could see no evidence of this on the ground. I came up with a cunning theory that the path had probably been re-routed post-Newbury bypass construction – the clues being the presence of the bypass a matter of metres away, and the green dashes on the map appearing to lead straight towards it. We crossed over the road bridge and walked a little way and there was indeed a relatively new-looking footpath sign going in to the left. We followed this, initially down a road past some houses, and then met up with what was clearly the former path, as we could see a fence some distance off with the bypass just beyond it.

Newish footpath sign off the B4494

Former footpath, now fenced off

Relevant area of the OS map

On the map snip, 'CH' (Clubhouse) marks Snelsmore House.

We turned left at a T-junction of paths and followed the path past a property called Beau House and along the road. The road crosses over the A34. There’s another golf club, Donnington Grove, in this area.

We past a couple of houses and a deserted barn from the former Castle Farm. The sign about the Limousin herd now seems to have gone from the end of the building, but I photographed it on a previous walk in 2021.

Donnington Castle

This path passes Donnington Castle. We made our way down to Donnington village and then turned left onto another footpath leading back up northwards towards a spot marked on the map as Nothing Hill.

Path leading towards Nothing Hill

This passes an interesting feature on the left: some land which Ray reckons was originally a 9-hole golf course. It sounds from Chat GPT as though this original 9-hole course was taken out of use when the course east of Wantage Road was expanded on that side of the road to be a full 18 holes. It's not the best photograph, but it shows some high fencing on the left and the ground in the right half of the picture was a raised flat area in manner of a tee or green.

Possible former golf course land at Nothing Hill

There’s some quite interesting history, if assorted AI queries are to be believed:

• The golf course at Donnington Valley began as a family venture in the late 1980s. According to this 2001 Golf Business News piece, the Cox family built the course themselves on land they owned and turned part of their home into a bar and committee room.
• The home in question appears to have been Fairfield Farm Donnington, which a local Facebook group tells me was owned by S L Cox and his two brothers, was sold and redeveloped as Donnington Valley Hotel and golf course.
• The hotel’s website confirms that Nothing Hill used to be part of the golf course.
• 
  Businessman Sir Peter Michael bought the Cox family's golf course around 1990 and it was extended to 18 holes. ChatGPT located a 1991 ad for a Head Greenkeeper for a "recently extended" 18 hole course.
• The hotel was built on the site of the original clubhouse, with golf facilities initially incorporated into the hotel.
• Sir Peter then acquired the neighbouring Snelsmore House estate in the mid-1990s. The golf course was redesigned and Snelsmore House became the clubhouse. It sounds as though the holes west of the B4494 might have been abandoned at this point and additional holes built on the newly-acquired land.

Old OS Pathfinder map showing Fairfield Farm

New OS Explorer map showing the hotel

The left-hand pic is from a 1981 OS "Pathfinder" map that my parents passed on to me. The right-hand pic is from the modern OS Explorer 158.