Tai Chi; taking up floorboards

Started a weekly beginners' Tai Chi class in September, run by the lovely David who has, apparently, been teaching Tai Chi in Wolverton since 1983. Blimey. The form we are learning is apparently the Long Yang form - similar to the form this chap’s doing, though I’m not sure it’s exactly the same. Here’s a clip of David himself doing part of the routine, presumably in his garden. David learned Tai Chi from Gerda Geddes, apparently more or less the first Tai Chi teacher in the UK. Geddes, a trained dancer, apparently came across Tai Chi in China in the late 1940s. An interesting red herring is that, in addition to dance, Geddes had apparently also worked with Wilhelm Reich, he of the Orgone accumulator.

As a not-originally-planned part of renovating the living room, Ruth has recently completed taking up all the floorboards in the living room and hallway, putting down insulation and replacing the floorboards with chipboard. We briefly considered trying to retain the original floorboards but they’re not a complete set as some have been replaced with newer board over the years, added to which some had woodworm. So we’re considering selling them – seemingly they can fetch a bit. Ray helped out as part of an exchange of labour he and Ruth have worked out, though he lent expertise and tools as well as labour. We took him for dinner at The Crown at Playhatch a couple of weeks ago as additional payment.

Ruth's first checking out of the floorboards, observed by Beau

Ray's car stuffed with insulation

Hallway partway through

Living room partly done

Rug

The inevitability of not actually finishing the living room before Christmas (artfully predicted by me some time ago) is upon us. We want to get Chris from Alldec back to do the painting, as we were impressed with his work last time, but he isn’t available until the new year. To increase cosiness until the new flooring is put down, we’ve brought a rug of Ruth’s down from the attic. I’d never seen it as it’s been rolled up since she moved in, but it’s actually quite nice. Ruth is a big fan of Persian-style rugs, which I can take or leave.

We were given some quails' eggs recently by Gail, who has started keeping quail. One has, sadly, been lost to one of their cats, but Ruth and I viewed the others at Emily's recent birthday party. I fried two of the eggs for breakfast on some sourdough bread.



To finish, a couple more snippets from the OU noticeboard:

 

(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.

Beau; RIP tree

As of the beginning of July, we have a new female bunny Beau. Harley had been on his own since Willow’s death in July last year, but Ruth had reached the conclusion that it might be best for him to have another companion. As before we went along to RRR and perused the limited number of females whom Sandra judged suitable, and agreed to an attempted bonding with Beau. She is around five years old, according to Steve and Sandra, and a bit skittish and highly-strung, so they warned – indeed she isn’t keen on being stroked, though perhaps she might come around, but she doesn’t appear too skittish otherwise. More importantly, she and Harley actually seem to work – they have been observed lying together a number of times and she has even on occasion been seen to groom him, albeit briefly. After the failure of both Lexie and Willow as companions for Harley – though Willow was an agreeable companion for humans – it’s a relief to have seemingly found him a suitable pairing. Beau has the same colour coat as Willow but is an erect-eared bunny as opposed to a lop.

Beau (left) and Harley being fed Fiba Sticks

Since Beau’s arrival we have been blocking off access to the stairs with a board in an effort to force Harley to stay downstairs and spend time with the new female, and amazingly, he appears much better and livelier than before – eating a wider range of food and hopping around after Beau, including following her out into the garden. I guess they really are social animals.

Sandra apologised for her masculine name but both Ruth and I are fine with it and have no intention of renaming her Belle.

Recently agreed, after months of wrangling, that Ruth could take out the conifer planted near the fence dividing us from number 51. Ray had planted it some years back – I think it might have been a Christmas tree though it was a sad-looking specimen and I had been convinced that it looked dead. Quite the contrary – it had grown into a splendid tree the past few years, resulting in us having to perform some surgery on it a couple of years ago. Recently, however, it had grown to such a size that Ruth had argued it had become too large for the garden – probably correctly, but I harboured some sentimental feeling for it, partly on account of its beautiful greenery, and had been reluctant to see it removed. However, I finally gave in recently on the condition that Ruth does something proactive for trees, e.g. via a donation to The Woodland Trust, e.g. through planting and sponsoring a tree or just making a donation. Or buying a small area of woodland.

The tree. RIP

August round-up

Met up with Helen the first Saturday in August for one of our as ever long overdue catch-ups. We had lunch in the branch of Byron at the Central Saint Giles Piazza, before making our way over to the British Museum - I had been devoid of cultural ideas so Helen had noted the free exhibition of Francis Towne watercolours. I had never heard of Towne but he seems to have painted a lot of pictures of Italy during a jaunt there in the 1780s. On arrival at the museum, we had to queue to go through what seemed to be a mammoth bag-checking operation in a specially erected tent in front of the museum. Can only assume heightened levels of security for some reason – whether connected to the previous week’s attack in nearby Russell Square I wasn’t sure.

Once inside, we opted for a general browse around some of the galleries before seeking out the Towne exhibition, though as it was a hot day we found ourselves spending a lot of time intently studying the exhibits that happened to be near the pedestal fans dotted about. The Towne watercolours were in room 90 in the Raymond and Beverley Sackler Wing, which, blessedly, was air-conditioned, meaning that we spent perhaps more time in it than we would otherwise have done. We had tea in the Great Court Restaurant before Helen had to run off to get her train back to Feltham as she and Greg were intending to travel to Tunbridge Wells later that evening. I inexplicably went to the Speedo shop in Covent Garden and bought a swimsuit, which I intend wearing as soon as I’ve lost a stone and a half.

View down to the Terrace Gardens

Ruth and I spent the second weekend in August on a two-night Secret Escapes break at the Richmond Hill Hotel. We arrived mid-afternoon on the Saturday, slogged up Richmond Hill in some heat and checked in, before going out again for a wander around the Terrace Gardens and looking down at the famous view which is apparently the only view in England to be protected by an Act of Parliament. This seems a bit disproportionate, surely – it’s a nice view but there are many such around the country. Just a reflection of the many rich/influential people who’ve lived in the area? On returning from the park I went for a relaxing swim and steam room session at the Cedars Health Club just behind the hotel.

On the Sunday morning we did a walk that I’d found in 'Walking Village London', starting by walking down Nightingale Lane past the splendid/monstrous (depending on your view of Victorian Gothic architecture) Petersham Hotel and walking to the ludicrously posh village of Petersham – never seen so many thumping great houses in a small area. Visited St Peter’s Church briefly (churchyard only as there was a service on) before walking to the neighbouring village of Ham. Crossed Ham Common, stopping for a while by the pond for Ruth to photograph some ducks, and made our way down Ham Street (where we were very excited to see a Huf Haus going up) past Ham House to the Thames Path. Walked back along the river to Richmond and had lunch at the Old Ship. Wandered round the shops for a while after lunch and Ruth bought two rings from Eastern Adornment. In the evening we had a nice dinner at Adesso, a Sicilian restaurant further down Richmond Hill. On the Monday morning we had a walk in Richmond Park before heading back to Reading.

Trees in Richmond Park

The hotel was OK – plus sides: friendly staff, nice though small room (a Hill Collection Double on the ground floor), Sky TV, nice steak dinner on the Saturday night. Downsides: ludicrous wine mark-up in the restaurant, atmosphere-free bar with big screen TV showing the Olympics, disappointing breakfast buffet, odd ensuite arrangement with a frosted glass wall on one side which coupled with the unfortunate positioning of a mirror enabled a bird’s eye view of your partner on the toilet.

The front at Paignton

Spent the following weekend down in Devon as part of a Book Group deputation to visit Claire for the August meeting, following her relocation to Newton Abbot back in February. I took the train down early on the Saturday morning, joining Helen, Alison and Ali who’d already arrived by car. Claire took us on a tour of nearby coastal towns thanks to a Torbay Dayrider bus ticket, starting off in Torquay, where we walked along the front a bit and ate ice creams, then on to Paignton, where we spent a couple of hours holed up in The Boathouse - Claire had planned this as a spot for us to wait out the storm that had confidently been forecast, but in the event it remained sunny. Helen ordered a cream tea and the rest of us picked at some snack food. After this we walked through Paignton to catch the bus again to Brixham, where we had a drink in The Blue Anchor and discussed the August book, Natsuo Kirino’s Out. After this we walked via the pretty harbour along to the Breakwater Bistro, where we had a lovely fish dinner seated at a table with a great view of the bay. Took the bus back to Newton Abbot and viewed Helen’s photos of her recent open water swimming holiday in Lithuania.

Brixham

View from Scout Point

The others left around 11am on the Sunday and Claire drove herself and me to visit Coleton Fishacre. The 1920s house is attractive-looking from the outside but we decided against going in, opting instead for a walk around the grounds despite the on-off rain. Very pretty grounds with some lovely viewpoints, albeit it was unfortunately not a clear day. The grounds border the South West Coast Path and you can look down to Pudcombe Cove, though the former access to the cove is now blocked off.  Had a look at a couple of things through Claire’s binoculars and pondered whether I might buy my own at some point. After a cream tea and some fat-chewing, Claire drove me to Dartmouth via the cute little car ferry from Kingswear. We parked up in Dartmouth and walked around the pretty little town, taking in Bayard's Cove Fort and and finishing with a waterside pint.

Dart estuary from Dartmouth

Over the two days we saw several rhinos that are evidently part of Paignton Zoo's Great Big Rhino Project, including this one - 'Rupert' - at Coleton Fishacre. Also this one in Paignton.

Ali, me, Claire and Alison behind a rhino

On the Monday morning we had a walk around Newton Abbot and back to Claire’s house via a pretty walk along the little River Lemon. Browsed in various charity shops and a New Agey shop where Claire bought me a ‘goldstone’ bracelet. On investigation, goldstone is not a natural material but a type of glass, but is quite pretty. Apparently, Goldstone is believed to bring luck to people who have the star sign of Leo. Leo is indeed my star sign, though I don’t have much interest in astrology.  This crystals site claims the following for goldstone:

Goldstone is said to help attain one's goals. Goldstone is also said to help one stay calm and stabilize the emotions. It can be used as an energy generator and can deflect unwanted energies, making it used as a protection stone. It is also used for long distance healing and revitalizing one's energy field.

That’s a lot of potential benefits. Must wear it often.

Returning to the book: I quite enjoyed Out, a Japanese crime novel about four women who become embroiled in dismemberment and other shady dealings after one of them murders her husband. There's an interesting interview with Natsuo Kirino here, noting that she started out writing romance novels before a seemingly rather dramatic change of genre.

Spent this last weekend at Mum and Dad's, coincidentally in the company of Ray who'd also picked that weekend to arrange a visit to them. We all had a walk along the Usk on Saturday followed by a visit to Dad's allotment, where we contemplated quite a number of courgettes that have now grown into marrows. Mum and Dad seem to have decided that they don't have a use for them and they'll have to be composted. I think I remember cooking stuffed marrow once, but it was decidedly uninteresting, so I didn't volunteer to take any.

On Sunday morning I took Ray for a walk from the Llanfoist Crossing car park along the disused railway line and then back along the canal. We were joined for a cottage pie lunch by Hannah and Henry and by Dave and the girls, followed by Mum and Nia appearing with a surprise birthday cake for me and a symbolic single candle. After lunch Ray had a rousing game of football with Nia which she allegedly won by a quite incredible hundred-and-something goals to his one. I participated briefly and tried to invoke the offside rule at one point, but didn't push it in case Nia challenged me on it.

Returned to Milton Keynes yesterday. Disquieting realisation that it's September on Thursday. Where has the year gone, etc.

June musings

June mixed and rainy so far. Some impressive rainfall in Milton Keynes lately, accompanied variously by thunder and flash-flooding, with inevitable long traffic jams. An entire stretch of grid road was closed last week due to flooding – bizarre.

Well, today is EU referendum day. Headed to Milton Keynes Christian Foundation this morning to vote, half expecting a long queue, but there was only one person ahead of me. Perhaps they were all biding their time until later. As a memento of this historic day, here's Google's reminder:

Looking back to the previous entry: the damp treatment to the living room external wall did indeed delay the living room project a bit, though it has been delayed longer than necessary by a) the fact that it’s us; b) our plasterer Mark has been injured, plus is also in the process of moving to Norfolk. Tried to think quickly what else we might need plastered before he goes. The damp treatments were carried out by a very nice man (whose name I've forgotten) from Thames Valley Preservation Ltd. Luckily I don't think we're afflicted by wood boring insects, but we know who to go to if and when.

As of last week the rest of the plastering is now done. As, after much to-ing and fro-ing, Ruth decided against installing a woodburning stove (for which I am profoundly thankful – had had visions of being obliged to strip down to underwear in order to sit comfortably in the living room), we got the inside of the fireplace plastered as well, which looks dead smart. It was still a bit damp when Ruth took this picture to send me, but the idea's there.

Next job is painting: I agreed a while ago to have a colour other than white (my default) on the living room walls, as Ruth thought a darker colour would look cosier (can’t decide whether to file the notion of ‘cosy’, along with ‘character’, in my list of poisoned interior decorating concepts). However, inevitably, it’s been a job fixing on one: I agreed to a tasteful earth tone, following which Ruth changed her mind and tried to sell me on slate grey, which I was initially doubtful about but which have now come round to, with the inevitable result that she’s now changed her mind and is trying to argue for a darkish blue. I don’t care for blue as a decorating colour, but am inclined to agree to it just in the interests of getting the job done – and also because the trade off is (and I'm recording this in writing) that I get sole choice over the dining room décor.

Our planned whole week boat trip next week has been scaled down, largely because Ray is understandably behind with his refurb due to having to work lots of weekends recently. His employer Lawrence has decided to sell his house near Hurley and move to Poole, so there has been lots to do prepping the property for any interested viewers who can afford five million pounds. Ruth and I went over a few Saturdays ago to visit his place of work and admire the immaculate gardens. Here he is in a couple of poses on the property. The plan is for him to work on the boat Saturday through to Tuesday and for us to go out up the Thames (as opposed to along the Kennet & Avon) for a few days from Wednesday.

Ruth and I went up to London on Saturday morning to visit a few places as part of Open Garden Squares weekend (photos here). Arrived a bit later than we intended as we discovered on arrival at Reading station that all the fast trains to Paddington appeared to be cancelled, presumably connected to Thursday's derailment. We duly got on a slow train, which took about an hour, and were surprised to be passed en route by several fast trains. Pondered deceitful nature of Reading’s departure screens.

After breakfast at Carluccio’s we took the Jubilee Line south from Baker Street to Canary Wharf to visit the roof garden at Crossrail Place that was opened in 2015 (the planting's now a good deal lusher than in the photos in the link).

Roof garden at Crossrail Place

We retraced our steps one stop on the tube to Canada Water, where we emerged into a part of London new to both of us and attempted to find Lavender Pond Nature Park, another garden on the route, apparently built on the site of a pond that was used for floating timber when the docks were active in that area (I didn't know anything about the Surrey Commercial Docks, but there's some blurb here.) After what seemed like a lot of walking through housing developments, we did eventually locate it, though it was a bit underwhelming – but in fairness it looked like there was some work going on to the boardwalks.

View towards Canary Wharf

From there we walked to join the Thames Path and looked at the river for a bit, all looking splendidly choppy and tidal. Looked across the river to Limehouse and kind of hoped that Ray doesn’t ever attempt to take his narrowboat out on to the river there, though I know you can only do it at certain times of day and accompanied by a pilot etc etc.

We walked westwards along the river for a bit towards the Brunel Museum, which has a garden that was also part of the weekend. On the way, passed one of the quite attractive little round brick buildings (one of two, I believe) housing the now-closed spiral staircases leading down into the Rotherhithe Tunnel. Apparently pedestrians can still walk through the tunnel, though I can’t imagine it’s too pleasant - see these blog entries here and here.

The final garden we visited ended up being the Garden Barge Square at Downings Roads Moorings. An amazing place - they claim to be London's only floating gardens. Access was a bit blustery and wobbly - we were warned by the guides to hold onto the railings - and the walkways are so narrow that more time was spent trying to avoid other people than actually looking at the planting.

View across the Garden Barges

We took the train back to Reading after two slow bus journeys back from the Tower Bridge area to Paddington - we had the bad luck to get on two buses in succession that both announced changes of destination en route. Once back in Reading, we went for dinner at ASK Italian where they seem to now serve half bottles of wine in these adorable little round carafe things.


The OU noticeboard continues periodically to amuse, in a cheap and childish sort of way:

Longer than planned walk around Caversham

26 March 2016; 6.23 miles

This started out as a Saturday stroll from the house with Ruth but ended up surprisingly long. Walked through central Caversham and into Caversham Court Gardens. Went up through St Peter's churchyard and along The Warren for a bit, before turning into Boundary Lane, an unmade road with some quite nice properties on including 'Catalpa'.

Boundary Lane

Emerged onto Upper Warren Avenue and walked to the end, bearing right onto Blagrave Lane. Turned briefly onto Jacksons Lane and then took a footpath leading off to the left (about point (2) on the map above), at Ruth's suggestion though I warned her it would make the walk longer.

The path brought us out onto the larger path that leads from the end of The Warren to Mapledurham. We turned right and walked as far as the crossroads, where we turned right and then bore right again up the hill and past Delta Force. Took the footpath back across the golf course and onto Blagrave Farm Lane to come out onto the Woodcote Road. Made our way back into Caversham, a bit knackered by this point.

Looking uphill from path heading NW towards Mapledurham. Chazey Wood at top.