The Thames Path XI:Goring-On-Thames - Shillingford Bridge (Living In The Past).

"Oh no, we won't give in in. Let's go living in the past" - Living In The Past, Jethro Tull

Jethro Tull, the band, appeared on Top of the Pops in 1969 with their vocalist, leader, and flautist Ian Anderson memorably standing on one leg for his flute solos. Jethro Tull, the 18c agriculturist who helped bring about the British Agricultural Revolution with his horse-drawn seed drill, was never on Top of the Pops but he was, very much, Top of the Crops.

What I didn't know, and I'd never thought about, was that he once lived in Crowmarsh Gifford in Oxfordshire (where, family legend informs me, the oil filter came off my dad's car about fifty years ago) but yesterday, due to a diversion on the Thames Path, we found that out. It wasn't the most enjoyable part of the day but it'll do to kick off this account of our walking the eleventh stage of the Thames Path from Goring-on-Thames to Shillingford Bridge.

With the dark nights very much drawing in, we were making a slightly earlier than normal start but I was up super early which was just as well because I had to get a rail replacement bus from Honor Oak Park to New Cross Gate, an Overground train to Whitechapel, and the Elizabeth Line to Paddington where I would meet Pam.

But not before I took in some history of the station (some of it Paddington related, some of it Windrush related, Paddington's off to Peru at the moment to retrace his roots, some of the Windrush generation were sent back to the Caribbean or sent to prison - some immigrants, it seems, are more equal than others - fictional ones), pondered how GWR had the gall to sell first class returns to Cholsey for £115.40 (my second class return was, with Network card, just under £20), bought a Guardian, and saw a man in the toilets singing R. Kelly's Bump n'Grind into the mirror.

It wasn't long before I ran into Pam and we boarded the train together, Shep joining us in Reading, and Colin, Patricia, and Ben (the man with the local knowledge, he lives in nearby Cholsey) joining us in pretty Goring-on-Thames. The Thames, by this point, feels as if it's come a long way from London even if we're just a little bit more than half way along it.

Pierreponts Cafe was packed and was reservation only so that plan was ditched and we eschewed a pub brunch in favour of the very friendly Village Cafe. I had a veggie breakfast and a cup of tea. Some of it was great but if I'm completely honest the homemade hash brown was a bit weird and the Glamorgan cheese sausage a little dry.

Those who had the veggie breakfast roll reported back happily and we all sat in a big room upstairs and discussed, in some details the pitfalls and dilemmas of filing one's records alphabetically. Big no-nos were people who file Bob Dylan under B instead of D and people who file under the definite article. The Smiths go under S rather than T. As for A House, well it didn't matter. None of us owned any of their recordings.

With a day starting on that high a note (and let's not forget the Bump n'Grind guy) it would be hard to improve but somehow we managed as we walked through picturesque Goring and crossed a series of bridges (the Thames splits into various channels here) and a weir into neighbouring Streatley. Briefly, we were on the same path as The Ridgeway. A potential future project? Could be (says Hong Kong Phooey).

Goring is a Britain in Bloom winner (and had a quite magnificent tree to prove it) and is twinned with Belleme in the Normandy region of France, a fact that has been commemorated with the Belleme Tap for all your water needs. Although there is a 215 mile long river nearby so water is not exactly hard to come by.

Off we went along the riverside path. The weather reasonably pleasant for November and the company as good as ever. The first place we came to was the small village of Moulsford which was mostly notable for the post-modern/faux-Egyptian pile of a house with a pod in its large garden. Googling reveals it to be Sphinx Hill, the youngest listed building in the whole of the UK.

Completed in 1999, it's the work of John Outram who also made a similarly styled Pumping Station on the Isle of Dogs and Cambridge's Cambridge Judge Business School which looks like something out of Squid Game. Sphinx Hill is inspired by the funerary complex of Djoser in Saqqara and is crowned by an attic made to look like a giant Eye of Horus.

The house's first owner, and the person who commissioned it - along with her husband, was Henrietta McCall, and there's no prize for guessing that she was an Egytologist. Moulsford's only other building to really grab our attention was the Beetle and Wedge pub and restaurant though it was too early for a pit stop. Colin did well by working out that the 'beetle' in the name did not refer to one of our six legged friends, but a type of hammer used - along with a wedge, to split wood. 

Jerome K. Jerome did even better by including this stretch of the river in his Three Men in a Boat and when the BBC (in 2005) filmed a show of the same name they had Griff Rhys Jones, Dara O'Briain, and Rory McGrath visit the Beetle and Wedge. Dara O'Briain held a door open for me on Wardour Street once, he seemed friendly. A friend of mine once saw Rory McGrath in a pub and the feedback was not so positive!

 

Not far north of Moulsford we crossed under two almost identical railway bridges with some spectacular brickwork. One of the them, the second one, was built by Isambard Kingdom Brunel who is a long term reference point in our various walking groups. He crops up quite a lot.

The path got muddier than I'd expected as we passed through Cholsey Marsh Nature Reserve and looked out to eight man crews and single rowers (many of them being trained via megaphone) training for the Oxford University Boat Club.

 

 

Pam admired me the glass 'bricks' and the spiral staircases and we made our way into the charming market town of Wallingford, a town my dad said was a 'proper' town as it wasn't full of nail bars. Although it must be said there was a nail bar there. As well as a wine bar, a topical war memorial (Remembrance weekend, lest not forget), a statue of Agatha Christie (who lived in nearby Winterbrook and is buried in Cholsey), a couple of fine churches, a delightful market square, some lovely Tudor buildings, and lots of pubs. Once of which we'd stop in.

One of which we'd stop in. Ben and Shep were particularly eager as they were now well ahead of the rest of the group and probably half way through their first pint. I wanted to see Wallingford though. It's got a bit of history. Wallingford Castle was once one of the greatest medieval castles in the whole of England. Built on the orders of William the Conqueror who crossed the river here in 1066, it was knocked down (ruins remain) by Oliver Cromwell in 1652. It is, quite literally, a bit of a ruin that Cromwell knocked about a bit.

 

Henry II is another monarch with links to Wallingford (he granted the town a charter in 1155) and Midsomer Murders was filmed here. Agatha Christie included Wallingford in some of her own work too. We stopped at The Boathouse. Rugby was on - naturally - but other than that it was a pleasant enough pit stop and we discussed vinegar, not for the first time that day, and other equally scintillating sunjects. According to Colin and Patricia, Spanish people do not like vinegar on their chips. Be it Sarson's or Heinz who, in my view, should not be trespassing on the vinegar market. Would they like it if Sarson's started making ketchup? These are the issues that fill my mind. 

 

 

 

 

 

 

I resisted the temptation to vote for which member of The Boathouse's 'team' I wanted to see gunged and we left the pub over Wallingford Bridge. We were having to take a diversion because the weir at Benson was not in use and we'd be on the wrong side of the river with no way to get over. This meant we had to come off the river and walk along some roads for a bit but it also took us to Crowmarsh Gifford, my dad's own oil filter (long gone, one suspects) and Mr Jethro Tull.

 

Unlike the band, he wasn't 'living in the past'. With his fancy seed drill he was very much the future. He's now got a cul-de-sac named after him (as well as a prog rock act) and who wouldn't want to have a cul-de-sac named after them? Elsewhere in Crowmarsh Gifford, we marvelled at a penny farthing and pondered how far we'd get before it got dark. A pub stop in Benson was ruled out but a brief singalong of Ai No Corrida (in tribute to Quincy Jones) was not.

Benson looked a nice (and moneyed) place. Quite different to the Benson that Shep and I had imagined when we passed through in the mid-eighties on the way to Oxford so that he could buy a 7" single of The Jesus And Mary Chain's Never Understand (surely nearer towns would have stocked it, maybe not) and lots of eccentric characters got on, or off, the bus.

There's a large house with its own personal Thames tributary running through its garden, a fierce dog gate post (that is horrible), and what appear to be holiday homes. Benson is nice but it doesn't strike me as a likely holiday destination. The large graffitied cock outside the holiday homes may have been off putting for some of the place's more genteel residents too.

It got dark on the ultimate stretch but it wasn't a long one and soon we had reached our final (sort of destination). Shillingford Bridge and the Shillingford Bridge Hotel. The main hotel was hosting a big Indian wedding but the bar area was full of friendly staff and punters and we had a couple more liveners while discussing vinegar (again), the correct pronunciation of the Spanish beer Mahou, the attractions of Dungeons and Dragons (each to their own but most of us thought them non-existent), the oeuvre of Pete Wylie, and the tactics and logistics of hunt sabotage. Ben's on a WhatsApp group for the nearby village of Brightwell-cum-Sotwell and there had been a picture on there of villagers who had been involved in some sort of 'mopping up mission'. In among the faces stood our former, disgraced, Prime Minister Boris Johnson.

Pity he didn't sort out all the other messes, the ones he caused. We booked a taxi to take us to Cholsey for a very reasonable £20 and we met with Tracy in the Red Lion for one more pint and more chat before heading over to Memories of Bengal where Carole and Dylan were waiting for us. They didn't wait as long as we did for our food though. It took about two fucking hours but at least there was Bangla to ease our concerns and when it came it was decent enough. I wasn't that imaginative and just had tarka dall, garlic naan, and pulao rice.

Carole and Dylan kindly gave Pam and myself a lift to Reading, stopping at Tesco Express for 'supplies' en route, and we took the train back to Paddington. I got the tube to Elephant & Castle and then fell asleep on the 363 bus waking up just before it got to Crystal Palace. I walked home (about another 2k), put the telly on (Match of the Day) and promptly fell asleep.

Not to worry. It had been a good day and it had been our final Thames Path walk of the year but we'll be back next year to walk to Abingdon and then on to Oxford before we get into the proper rural parts (that should be fun, logistically). Thanks to Pam, Shep, Ben, Colin, Patricia, Tracy, Carole, and Dylan for making it such fun and thanks to Pam, Colin, Ben, and Shep for contributing photos to this blog. See you all again soon. In the future, not the past.