The stretch of the Thames between Walton-on-Thames and Staines (or Staines-upon-Thames as it is now) was certainly showing its best side yesterday. Bathed in radiant Easter sunshine, the water level was high and it was flowing fast. Coots glided effortlessly downstream, Egyptian geese basked in the warm April weather, swans frolicked, and a solitary heron gracefully took to the sky as people ate ice creams and downed cold beers by the riverside at the start of a four day weekend.
By the end of the day I felt great. But the day certainly didn't start like that for me. I'd had a particularly nasty bout of knee gout for over a week. It had started in my right knee (very sore) before jumping to my left knee (excruciatingly painful) and I'd even had to postpone last Saturday's TADS trek from Dorking to Reigate via Box Hill (it's been rescheduled for Saturday June 24th).
I'd been hoping I'd be good to go on Good Friday, yesterday, but when I woke up at 3.30am needing a wee it was a struggle walking ten yards to the toilet and back. I finally got up properly at 5.30am and it was a bit better. I was determined not to postpone so, after some scotch pancakes, a cup of tea, and a couple of Nurofen I headed out at about 8.30am.
I made it down to Honor Oak Park station okay, picking up a Guardian from Sainsbury's, and then took the lift (for the first time ever, gout gives you lots of opportunities for new experiences) down to the platform. One Overground train to Surrey Quays, another to Clapham Junction, and then a mainline train to Walton-on-Thames before limping a couple of miles past the private roads, well maintained hedges, and posh houses of the Surrey market town.
I'd left home early because I knew I was walking slower than normal. What should have been a twenty minute walk to Le Petit Cafe on Bridge Street turned out to be closer to forty minutes but when I arrived I was the second one there. Only Bee had beaten me.
Le Petit Cafe, as its name suggests, was compact and bijou, but the friendly staff moved five small tables together and soon Shep, Laura, Adam, Joe, Mo, Pam, Sharon, and Jason all rocked up. Ten of us. Good turnout. Shep stood me some chips and beans with bread and butter and I washed it down with a cup of tea. It was tasty but the portions were small. Luckily, Mo was inundated with toast and kindly supplemented my meagre brunch with some of that.
At one point some guy, seemed like a regular, turned up to the cafe and remarked upon how busy it was before making a slightly inappropriate comment about another lady customer's looks. Realising this, he then apologised to her adult child who was with her and he didn't stop there. He continued, quite hilariously, to dig a deeper and deeper hole for himself before regaling us of tales of his former boxing career and how that, and his ability to drive a car safely, had been curtailed by being epileptic. It doesn't sound funny but his delivery was priceless.
As was my attempt to get up from my chair. I'd taken Nurofen (Shep had forgotten to bring Feminax as promised/threatened but then I'd forgotten the guide book so we're quits there) but it hadn't really kicked in yet so I struggled a bit as we wandered along Bridge Street, past The Bear (a pub that provides beer, jerk chicken, and barbering!) and a few more pretty houses.
Some gentle steps took us down to the riverside and, my, it looked resplendent. It'd not been a particularly harsh winter but it had felt like a bloody long one. Yesterday felt like the warmest and sunniest day of the year so far and this was reflected in the blooming flowers, blossoming trees, and verdant greenery that flanked the banks of the Thames as well as in the river itself and in the smiles of the faces of my friends as they breathed it all in.
There was an early, minor, disappointment. The Weybridge/Shepperton ferry (at a location which features in H.G.Wells' War Of The Worlds) we'd been hoping to take across the river wasn't running (Shep had rung from the cafe and been told the river was too rough at the moment for it to operate) so instead we headed up on to the almost space age Walton Bridge which crosses the river at a spot where it is suggested, with no evidence whatsoever apparently, that Julius Caesar forded the Thames on his second invasion of Britain in 54BC. More factually, there was a hospital set up during the First World War to treat wounded troops from New Zealand.
Built in 2013, the current Walton Bridge is the sixth bridge to cross the river at this spot but as a reminder that our current breed of politicians are not as forward thinking, or progressive, as our architects there's an unofficial blue plaque on the bridge reminding those that pass over it that local MPs, and Tory bigwigs, Kwasi Kwarteng and Dominic Raab voted in October 2021 to allow raw sewage to be dumped in the Thames. In fact, after thirteen years of Tory misrule, experts now say there is no river or beach in the whole of the UK that is deemed safe or sanitary to swim in.
It's sometimes hard to square the friendly faces of passers by and dog walkers in the area with the fact that a majority of them voted for Kwasi Kwarteng to be their MP less than four years ago. Since he commanded 58.9% of the vote for the Spelthorne constituency in 2019 he's not only approved raw sewage dumping in the Thames but he's, with the help of Liz Truss, crashed the economy and has recently been caught, along with Matt Hancock, in a trap placed by Led By Donkeys in which they offered to work for a completely non-existent South Korean firm for thousands of pounds a day.
A side hustle that may not be strictly illegal but is hugely immoral and a massive conflict of interests for standing members of parliament, no matter how shit they are their jobs. Spelthorne should be more proud of Thomas Love Peacock, the poet, author, and friend of Percy Shelly. In all honesty, I'd never actually heard of him but a brief Googling reveals he wrote satirical novels with titles like Crotchet Castle, Nightmare Abbey, and The Misfortunes Of Elphin.
On a pavement best described as minimal, we passed the inviting looking Red Lion in Shepperton. If it'd been later in the day it would have made a good stop although I wouldn't have fancied working there as a waiter. They were having to carry trays of drinks across the busy B375.
We soon came off the pavement into a wooded, and for the first time in the day - muddy, area. Shep posed outside the home of Shepperton FC and a dog walker gave us directions back to the river - signage being sparse and me having forgotten the book. That involved passing the pleasant looking Manor House Court (the font used in its signage even more pleasing) and crossing Church Square where me and Shep ended up in early 2020 (before the pandemic) after a brief, unaffiliated Thames walk.
On that day we'd looked in the rather large Anchor pub and it had been eerily empty so we'd repaired to the much busier, and much smaller, King's Head on the other side of the square where they were showing a Barrow FC game on the television and for some reason had a large framed photo of Rubens Barrichello on the wall. Well he did win eleven grand prix between 2000 and 2009.
The Anchor looked as if it's no longer operating as a pub but The King's Head seems to be still going strong. We didn't stop. We carried on down Ferry Lane, sadly we saw no toads trying to cross the road as the signs had warned us, and when we reached the river a few of us stopped at the rather busy Ferry Coffee Shop.
A big moment for me as I had my first outdoor ice cream of the year. I usually like to go for a 99 (and there were plenty of others who did just that later when Mr Whippy showed up) but instead I had a rather delicious mint Magnum. When queuing up to buy it I noticed four young men in the line in front of me who were also doing the Thames Path. They had a far more encyclopaedic tome than the one I'd left at home on the shelf, a very detailed map, and proper hiking sticks.
They made us look like a bunch of amateurs which, to be fair, is exactly what we are. We paused for a while by Shepperton Lock as people enjoyed their ice creams. It was now so warm I even took my jumper off. The photos of us, below, show a content and happy crowd. Joe, of course - being over two decades younger than the next youngest of us, ended up being the most photogenic of all of us.
And he's really charming, bright, and curious too, the git. I'd have barely spoken to people the age I am now when I was his age. Which was stupid of me. I might have learned a few valuable life lessons but then I suppose that would have depended on who I'd spoken to. Not all adults in the 80s and 90s were paragons of virtue or Delphic fonts of infinite wisdom.
We finally got moving again, busy Thames Court pub to our right and Pharaoh's Island (where all the properties have names like Memphis, Sphinx, Nile, and Luxor) to our left. The towpath followed the gentle curves of the river and though there were clouds in the sky the sun was out and the grass was soft underfoot. The going was easy - even with gout.
We saw a lovely home made sign offering passers by to help themselves to a ball. Although there were no actual balls available to help ourselves too. After a while, we reached a kissing gate and one that was pretty muddy. Adam's scarred legs already told of a recent misfortune with a barbed wire fence but he still attempted, at first, to climb over. Sprightly and youthful Joe hopped over in one go while the rest of us used planks of wood so we didn't submerge too deeply in the quagmire.
Laura, perhaps sensibly, went barefoot and poor Sharon was already covered in mud up to the knee after an earlier slippage. She took it in much better spirits than I did a recent fall in Epping Forest which ended up making me look like I'd just returned from active service in the Somme.
We were now in the wide, green, expanses of Dumsey Meadow and a gentle stroll through the meadow would lead us to Chertsey Bridge and the nearby Kingfisher pub where we'd make our first pub stop of the day. It was busy but there were tables in the beer garden so I enjoyed my first outdoor pint of the year.
A Madri. I sometimes like to take a local ale on these walks but the sunshine and warmth seemed to be calling for a nice cold lager. Shep bought me a second one and we sat in the garden chatting about all the usual nonsense. The news came through that S Club 7's Paul Cattermole had died. He was forty-six years old. S Club 7's first single, Bring It All Back, came out in June 1999 when I was thirty years old so I was never really likely to be in their fan demographic but they sang some decent songs (Reach, S Club Party) and brought joy to many and it's always sad when someone dies before their time.
Which, sadly, brings us to the case of Zane Gbangbola. Seven year old Zane died at his home in Chertsey in 2014 and was found to have very high levels of deadly hydrogen cyanide in his body at the time of his death. The case, as you can see from the signs we saw below, is still ongoing but, not for the first time in recent years, some of the blame is being apportioned to the government and their ineffective and dishonest COBRA meetings.
We'd be having our own, very different, Cobra meeting later on but at that point we still had a few miles to cover. I'd necked a couple more Nurofen in the pub garden but my knee was still playing up and the last couple of hours were pretty tough.
It was, however, more than made up for by how picturesque it was. The sun was lower now and as it shone through the trees it made for a magnificently evocative aspect, the waterfowl were still giving it their Easter best, and boats - both static and moving, all added to a hugely idyllic scene.
Locals were getting in on it too. We'd passed under the M3 motorway near where the Abbey River (strictly speaking a Thames backwater) flows into the Thames itself and as we passed along Laleham Park and near Penton Hook Island it was impossible not to notice that many of the rather lovely houses along the banks of the Thames here had eccentric touches. As Joe and I discussed, wealth helps allow you to cultivate eccentricity.
There was a guy sat on his porch playing Phil Collins' In The Air Tonight on his guitar as people walked by, there was a house with a lifesize statue of polar bear standing vigil on its balcony, and another with seated, and again lifesize, figures of Joliet and Elwood from The Blue Brothers sat watching the world go by. Yet another house had a large Kentish flag in its garden and a sign in the window saying TODAY'S FLAG:KENT. I rather like that they change the flag daily. Keeps life interesting.
Most of the others stopped for a sit down but I continued on as I was moving slowly now and knew they'd easily catch me up. Shep came with me to keep me company and on the final stretch into Staines we took in some nice Art Deco flats before being caught by Adam and Bee. The group had spread out now and we were walking in groups of two. We were due to meet an old friend, Simon, in the pub in Staines and I'd had to text him a couple of times to tell him we were now running a bit late.
Simon, as ever a gentleman and a scholar, instead walked down to meet us and soon eleven of us were sat in the rather spacious Last Hop pub near Staines Bridge listening, not to Shep's satisfaction, to Queen, looking at Hard-Fi posters, and, in my case, drinking a Republika pilsner lager. I'd not seen Simon for about five years so it was good to hear his news and see that he's not aged at all. It was almost shocking, in the nicest of ways, to hear that both his daughters are now teenagers.
With Pam, Sharon, Jason, Simon, and myself that meant there were now five former, and in one case, current, PRS staff in our group. But, luckily for the others, we didn't go travel too far down that conversational road. In fact we only had time for one quick drink, though somebody - not me - managed a squeezer in the form of a half, before heading next door to Roshni's for Indian food.
It was just the right side of busy in there. Not despairingly empty but not so full we'd be waiting two hours for food. I squeezed in between Bee and Joe and had an unimaginative, if tasty, dal makhani and garlic naan. We'd had twenty-two poppadums between us and I managed to neck three Cobra beers. It was a shame I couldn't talk to everyone and it was a shame we couldn't stay longer but the couple of hours we spent in there absolutely flew by and soon people were leaving.
I walked (quite easily as it happened - not sure if that was the Nurofen, the Cobra, or just the passing of time) back to the station with Mo where we met Bee who had headed off before us. Bee jumped off at Feltham to change trains, and, at Waterloo, Mo headed up the escalators to Waterloo East. I wandered along The Cut and hopped on the 63 bus home. I'd walked over ten miles with gout so I knew I'd sleep pretty well (which I did). More than that though, I'd had a bloody lovely day.
Thanks to Bee, Pam, Mo, Adam, Joe, Shep, Laura, Sharon, Jason, and Simon for a real Good Friday tonic and thanks to Bee, Pam, Sharon, and Adam for the maps and snaps I've included, alongside my own, in this blog. We'll be back on the Thames Path on Saturday May 13th, heading from Staines to Windsor, but there's an LbF walk (Croydon Pt.I:Ad Summa Nitamur Pt.I) and a TADS trek (Ashurst to Brockenhurst:Old Yet Ever New) before then. Come join us. It's fun. Even when it hurts a bit.
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