The Thames Parth IX:Henley-on-Thames to Reading (The Quest For The Quintessential Quagmire).

Giggity giggity goo! It was no surprise that The Family Guy's pervert-in-chief Glenn Quagmire should crop up in conversation during yesterday's Thames Path walk from Henley-on-Thames to Reading and that's not because we're bunch of twisted degenerates and depraved deviants. No, that only applies to SOME of us.

 

It's because there seemed to be an actual quagmire awaiting us at almost every corner. That's what it felt like - because that's what it WAS like. Some of them were manageable, some of them defeated us but, despite everything (and with a little bit of cheating - read on) we made it all the way from Henley-on-Thames to Reading and, I think, we all managed to have a pretty good time in doing so. The stretch was nearly as beautiful as it was moist.

I'd started the day early (of course) and taken a series of tubes from Honor Oak Park to Paddington where I bought myself a new network card, took some photos of various Paddington and Windrush related memorials and boarded the train to Twyford at platform 14 (I didn't even know Paddington had that many platforms) where I met with Pam and Mo.

We joined Shep (who was - quite outrageously - wearing day of the week socks with THE WRONG FUCKING DAY on them) at Twyford and took the train via Wargrave (which Shep dismissed as a shithole - along with other W places like Wokingham and Wolverhampton, Winchester and Winchelsea escaped his wrath) and Shiplake and into Henley-on-Thames where we made the shortish walk to The Catherine Wheel pub, a Wetherspoons (Tim Martin is still a total dick but the veggie food is rather good - and cheap - and quick), for a veggie breakfast and a cuppa.

There we met with Ben, Colin, Patricia, Sharon, and Jason. It was quite a nice spot, for a 'Spoons, and had a pleasant garden that would have been even better if we'd had a couple of degrees more heat. Still, it wasn't raining. The day before it had hoyed it down from dawn to dusk and the water that had fallen was going to make its presence felt later in the day. Of that nobody would be able to deny.

We carried on out of Henley along the High Street and Thameside and past St Mary's Church and the Relais hotel (formerly The Red Lion) and, soon, picked up the Thames again near The Angel pub where we'd stopped for a drink on the last leg of this epic walking project. Boats moored up along the, sometimes overflowing - and always high, banks of the river and I reminisced about trips to Henley with Pat the Rockin' Maniac (who passed away just over eight years ago) and the time Shep and I had a splash about in the river itself - back in the eighties!

I enjoyed the matching boats lined up in formation, I enjoyed the old school fuel pumps, and I enjoyed the fact we were walking on a concrete path. That wouldn't last all day. We'd been warned, by a friend of Mo's, that there'd be a diversion along the route and it wasn't long before we reached it. It was a shame to come off the Thames (not least because the wooden bridge that went right out across the water looked lovely) but needs must - and, as it happened, it would be far from our last diversion.

Truth be told, this diversion was a pretty short one - much shorter than it looked on a map I'd been sent, although it was quite muddy in places and involved having to walk through some puddles that, thankfully, looked deeper than they were. Still enough for some of us to get our socks and feet wet, mind.

To keep us entertained, and to boggle our minds at just how rich some people are, we took in the expansive Bolney Court. A huge house that contained a maze, a sunken garden, and a private railway. Google informed me that Bolney Court is, or was, owned by Swiss financier Urs Schwarzenbach, a polo playing friend of King Charles. I wonder if he's a nice guy!

On reaching the Thames, and the path, again we passed under a low railway bridge (most of us, but not all of us, having to duck), through a kissing gate, and into a field that appeared to be, in places, entirely underwater. We tried various routes. Colin skirted the perimeter while Shep, Jason, and myself tried to cut through on the inside.

Both attempts, however, involved coming out into water that was simply too deep to pass through. Even for the wellington boot brigade - Colin, the maverick, had opted for some canary yellow Converse. In places it was hard to tell where the Thames ended and where the overspill began and with dirty Thames water being in the news yet again (the Tories, enabled by a reckless Brexit they thought would save their party but seems certain to destroy it, allowing unscrupulous water companies to pump raw sewage into the river to such a degree that the competitors in today's varsity boat race were advised not to celebrate by jumping in less they catch E.coli) it seemed inadvisable to go any further.

So we turned back and picked up Mill Road which would, eventually, bring us back to the course of the Thames. More big houses. With big gardens. And big gates. The group spread out - as it did many times across the day - and near Alfie's Island we rejoined the Thames Path. But not for long!

Once we'd passed Philimore's Island, on a path that was muddy but manageable, we reached Shiplake College Boathouses. The path here disappeared underwater and, again, it was virtually impossible to tell what was river and what was path. A couple, and their dog, came through the other way. She'd taken her shoes and socks off (not sure about him) but said it wouldn't be easy for the next couple of miles.

While there were a couple in our group that would have, probably, happily gone barefoot there were far more that wouldn't. I looked at the map. There was a pub nearby. It was starting to rain. The smart money seemed to be saying repair to the pub, sit down, get dry, have a drink, and then make a decision.

So that's what we did. We passed the picturesque 13c St Peter & St Paul church (our photos making it look like a sunny day which, at times, it was - it was the rain the day before and earlier in the week that had done the damage) where, we soon found out, Lord Tennyson got married and came out on the A4155 road near the unassuming looking Plough pub.

Unassuming it may have been, and set up more for dining than drinking, but the staff were super friendly and helpful (I had questions to ask about roads, paths, and bus routes) and they appeared to have a decent range of ales. Though I stuck to lemonade.

As we debated what to do and how to do it, walking the A4155 seemed a bad idea - as it's a busy road and doesn't have paths - none of which stopped another couple I briefly spoke to in the pub, and the bus would have taken us all the way to Reading. We felt we wanted to walk as much as the river as possible.

As we tossed these options back and forth, Ben (who had been sitting quietly with his phone) announced that his wife Tracy would come out and give us all a lift to Sonning where we could reconvene in The Bull Inn and pick up the river again. It involved two trips for Tracy and was an act of incredible generosity but it would mean we'd miss three miles of the Thames Path. An asterisk will forever be included when I look back at this leg.

Obviously with the large number of us in attendance, it meant Tracy had to do two trips. I went first, with Mo, Sharon, and Jason and soon Shep, Pam, Colin, and Patricia joined us. Ben went home with Tracy to freshen up but he'd be back for Indian food later. Sadly, Tracy wasn't. She was busy with work. She was missed. Not least because we hoped to treat her to a meal as a thankyou for being so helpful.

Sonning, it has to be said, looked as quintessential a village as one could wish to encounter. Multiple bridges spanning the Thames, which breaks into three separate channels - briefly - here, and beautiful old buildings all around. Sonning, Sonning Common, and, er Sonning Eye are split between Oxfordshire and Berkshire but we were heading to the Oxfordshire side and The Bull Inn, a pub described by Jerome K. Jerome as "a veritable picture of an old country inn".

Lovely it was too, families sat outside in the not particularly warm spring sunshine and we took our drinks inside. One of our group remarked that the guy serving us (maybe the landlord) looked a bit like Chas from Chas'n'Dave and it felt like the sort of pub you could happily waste a day in it. Not least a Good Friday when surrounded by friends.

We didn't make that mistake, though, and soon we were heading back towards the Thames via the 19c St Andrew's church, a venue that has seen the burials of some notable figures - though none I had ever heard of. Soon we were back on the river and though Jason was having some problems with his leg he gamely refused to concede defeat.

With the sun now low in the sky, this stretch looked beautiful (even weak bladdered men who'd had a couple of pints dipping into the bushes for 'relief' couldn't ruin it - and nor could a muddy - though easily passable - field) and soon the tech units on the outskirts of Reading came into view. As did a ludicrous number of swans and geese. Reading really is home to a huge amount of waterfowl.

There were a handful of rabbits gamboling about too - and Mo spotted what Sharon and I believed to be (and a quick Internet search all but confirms was) a curious, if shy, muntjac. Riverisde, some of the boats (many with sheds attached) hardly looked seaworthy and in the woods between Tesco and the river young lads drank strong lager with old crusty types. It's a part of Reading (the town I was born in and, along with Northampton, one of the two largest towns in Britain to never attain city status) that I never used to visit when I was younger (preferring The After Dark, gigs at the University, the festival, and a selection of town centre pubs) but it's one of the most interesting parts of Reading.

Finally we reached Reading Bridge (built in 1922, opened one year later) and crossed under the railway lines, past the train station, down Station Road/Queen Victoria Street, and right into Broad Street (past Union Street - known to all true Reading folk as Smelly Alley) and, opposite the Broad Street Mall (formerly the Butt's Centre where I'd get my hair cut in the eighties and visit Listen records - part of the Chain with No Name, as Colin reminded me, for the latest independent releases) and on to Crispy Dosa, a small chain whose Greenford branch Pam, Shep, Ian and I had visited (and enjoyed) before.

There was a bit of Reading history in David Sharp and Tony Gowers' trusty Thames Path tome. I didn't read it out while people were enjoying themselves (we'd met, in Crispy Dosa, with Carole, Dylan, Adam, Teresa, Joe, Tina, Neil, and surprise guest Eamon - and Ben had rejoined too - table for SEVENTEEN please!) but this is MY blog so you can't escape it (well, you can just scroll past the next couple of paragraphs, there won't be a quiz - or will there?).

John Betjeman described Reading as "a town that hides its past well" (which is nicer than he was about Slough) and he's on to something. Reading's got a lot of history - regal and otherwise - but it tends to look to the future with its reputation (not one it had when I was a kid - when it was better known for biscuits) as a centre for tech firms and business parks). Over one thousand years ago King Alfred's army and the 'marauding' Danes fought on what is now the High Street and the church of St Mary conceals the ruins of an abbey that was once larger than Westminster and was consecrated by Thomas a Becket, then Archbishop of Canterbury, in 1164.

In the Middle Ages, pilgrims came to Reading to see what they believed was the hand of the apostle St James, Henry I was buried in Reading in 1136, and Tudor monarchs like Henry VIII frequently visited. A later monarch, Victoria - whose statue stands outside the town hall and is regularly crowned with a traffic cone, was less of a fan. It's said her head in the statue looks away from the town in disgust. One, it seems, was not amused.

Other Reading notables, in one way or another, include Jane Austen who (like my dad) went to school in Reading, William Fox Talbot who set up the first mass produced photo laboratory here, and Oscar Wilde whose stayed, famously in Reading Gaol, and probably had a less favourable view of the place. The town hall, famously, hosts a copy of the Bayeux Tapestry and, for many, the town is perhaps most famous for the annual festival. Once dominated by rock dinosaurs, then by indie bands, now a bit more of a mixed bag. It's a fun event I attended about ten or more times and it was on my birthday weekend which brings us to perhaps Reading's least famous person.

David John Evans (that's me) was born in Reading on Wednesday 28th August 1968 in the former Battle hospital - about a mile down the Oxford Road from Crispy Dosa and now a Tesco Express. So, yesterday was, not for the first time, a sort of homecoming for me. I celebrated with masala vada, a pretty spicy ghee podi masala dosa (mahoosive), a mango lassi (with a ginormous straw - though one that still passed the test of standing up straight in the lassi), and a can of orange Fanta,

We spread out over two tables and though the service was chaotic, and the waiter one of the fastest speakers I've ever encountered - as well as being overly keen to upsell us more expensive food times, but it was friendly and the food came quick. Nobody complained and when it came to paying we managed to operate a sliding scale of payment which meant some (the non-drinkers) paid £20 each and others (those who necked three beers, primarily) paying £30.

There was further chaos as we left Crispy Dosa. Some went on to other pubs but Pam, Mo, and I all made our way back to Reading station - but not together! We reconvened and got the speedy train back to Paddington (Pam reading out a very moving poem - Autumn - she wrote as a pre-teen) where we all went our separate ways. I took the Bakerloo line to Elephant & Castle and walked a handful of bus stops down (ensuring that I hit a 2024 steps record of 38,014) before jumping on the 363 bus home.

It'd be another great, enjoyable (if, at times, slightly confusing) day on the Thames Path and I'm looking forward to going again. Next time we'll meet in Reading (no shortage of greasy spoons there) and head to George Michael's old home village of Goring. Thanks to Pam, Mo, Shep, Ben, Colin, Patricia, Sharon, Jason, Tracy, Tina, Neil, Carole, Dylan, Adam, Teresa, Joe, and Eamon for being part of it (and to Colin, Pam, Mo, and Sharon for the snappage and mappage included here). Hope to see you all again soon - and hoping Bee will be back on manouevres with the Thames Path gang again soon too. No quagmire please next time. Giggity!