The Thames Path XII:Shillingford Bridge to Abingdon (or Everybody Loves The Sunshine).

"Everybody loves the sunshine. Sunshine, everybody loves the sunshine. Sunshine, folks get down in the sunshine. Sunshine, folks get 'round in the sunshine. Just bees and things and flowers" - Everybody Loves The Sunshine, Roy Ayers

On the twelfth stage of our Thames Path odyssey, the sun came out as if in tribute to Roy Ayers (the soul jazz great passed on this week at the age of 84) and it was certainly a blessing for us walkers. Not only does everybody love the sunshine, everybody looks better in the sunshine. Everything looks better in the sunshine. Everyone (almost everyone) is happier in the sunshine.

The general consensus about yesterday's walk was that it was a great day. I even heard the word 'perfect' bandied about. Certainly it wasn't just the weather that was on our side. We had beautiful countryside, hardly any mud or flooding (as some had been concerned about), the pub stops were great, and we had, in Shep's words, a "decent crew" on the walk. Starting with seven and ending with eight.

I'd got up at the silly time of 5:20am and I was out of the house not longer after 7. Windrush line to Canada Water, Bakerloo to Baker Street, and Circle line to Paddington where I had plenty of time to kill (pacing around and getting those all important steps up, reading about Sicily in a Lonely Planet guide - potential future holiday plan) before meeting Pam on the concourse of Leon and hopping on the 0915 train to Didcot Parkway.

Shep was already there (running early as usual) and the three of us repaired to Boswells for veggie breakfast and hot drinks (top marks to the beans, toast, mushrooms, hash browns, and scrambled egg - marks off for the tomatoes and the disappointing and crumbly vegetable sausages) before availing ourselves of a Wanda Cars taxi to Shillingford Bridge (£27/£30). A friendly double denim clad local suggested he would have given us a lift for free as Shillingford Bridge reminded him of an ex-partner and there was a convenient spot in the bushes there where he'd enjoyed historical intimacy!

Colin, Patricia, Chris, and Ben were waiting on the bridge itself for us (Tracy would join us later) and it certainly looked very different to when we finished up there, in the dark, back in November. We crossed the bridge and immediately dipped down a little snicket which brought us out to a very fine aspect. A view of the water's edge, complete with a nice little bench, and a thatched boathouse as well as a building that had markers to show us how high the water has got during Thames floods over the years.

 

 

 

At times, over all our heads. The village of Shillingford itself looked a pleasant, and sleepy, kind of place. Wisteria Cottage had yet to come into bloom but you can see from the photos below how impressive it will look soon and Patricia had visited before and had a photo on her phone so we didn't even have to imagine.

 

We walked, briefly, along the path of the A4074 before cutting through a field to the side of the river again and we followed that, the day getting ever warmer, along a nice stretch which took us to where the river Thame flows into what was once, and - in Oxford - still is, the river Isis creating the Thamesis which soon got shortened to the Thames.

 

It's where we did out Wittenham Clumps walk back in April 2022 and sure enough we could see through the denuded branches of the riverside trees to those clumps and, as we did three years back, we had a pooh sticks race on the pooh sticks bridge (Little Wittenham Bridge). It was a bit chaotic so no clear winner was given and I came to the conclusion that a decent pooh sticks race should have seen the floating wood race at least as far as Shillingford Bridge and possibly all the way to Tower Bridge in London. My stick was bent, Colin had a long thin one, and there was also a short fat one on display. It was not the last round of genital based humour to intrude upon the day.

 

 

We crossed the Thames via Days Lock as white water gushed impressively through and then we followed the loop of the river as it looked across to Burcot. We passed dog walkers, fishermen, and photogenically hollowed out trees but alas we saw no dragonflies, lapwings, perch, tench, common bream, or even eels.

All of which signs informed us we might do if we were lucky. Instead Chris checked in on the Crawley v Reading game (his brother Mike and our friend Ian - both Reading fans - were in attendance for a game that ended in a 1-1 draw) and Shep and Ben started moving away at the front at some pace. It seemed likely they had sniffed out a pub - and they had.

The Barley Mow in Clifton Hampden is listed as "one of the most famous" pubs on the Thames (as well as "the best known pub on the Thames" because, and not boasting but I guessed this, it features in Jerome K. Jerome's 1889 novel Three Men In A Boat. It also appears in Charles Dickens Jr's The Dictionary of the Thames from six years afterwards but Dickens Jr is nowhere near as celebrated as his father so that was mostly brushed over.

It's a bloody nice pub though and it's in a very nice spot - a spot you're unlikely to stumble on unless you either live locally or are on some crazy Thames walking project. A sign welcomes 'Waggy Tails and Walkers' and so we brushed what little mud we had off our boots off and I had myself a pint of blackcurrant'n'lemonade while some of the others got started on something stronger.

 

Chris, also off the pop, passed around some very tasty flapjacks he'd made and we all enjoyed a much needed sit down and a good ol' chinwag in the beautiful afternoon sun. It would have been very tempting to make a 'two pint mistake' but, instead, common sense took control and we headed back to the river. We'd calculated another hour and a half or so to Sutton Courtenay and then about a third of that into Abingdon (now called Abingdon-on-Thames). We were a little optimistic there but we weren't too far off and it wasn't to affect anyone's day or anyone's enjoyment of the day.

 

From the pub it was just shy of another two hours to Sutton Courtenay. A pretty if uneventful, and companionable, stretch. Company aside the highlights were the remarkably unmuddy paths, the spring flowers coming into bloom, the pretty trees, the odd red kite, and, of course, a pylon. There's always a pylon and usually I take a photo of it.

 

 

 

 

Sutton Courtenay, a place - like Abingdon - I'd never visited before, is a lovely little village. The childhood home of one of our walking gang (Dave Fog - who was not present on this particular jaunt) and a place where we were greeted by two young girls (about 6/7 years old) skipping through a field singing "girls win, boys in the bin". Happy International Women's Day, everybody!

One of the houses in the village used to be the home of Helena Bonham-Carter and Tim Burton and, possibly, still is the home of the former. One of the houses, and it's much clearer which one this is thanks to a blue plaque, was once the home of Herbert Asquith, the Liberal Prime Minister at the start of World War I and the great grandfather of Bonham-Carter.

 

Nice though those houses are, and they are very nice, our priority was the beer garden of The George pub - a pub that sells nearly as much jam as it does beer. I had another blackcurrant'n'lemonade while some of the others made two pint mistakes. Tracy joined us and Ben seemed absolutely determined to both show me and send me a photograph he had on his phone of a dog with a rather large penis. I didn't like the look of the dog and I can't imagine seeing its cock, large or not, would have changed my view on that.

Pub aside, Sutton Courtenay's other highlight is All Saint's church which is the site of the final resting place of the aforesaid Asquith, newspaper publisher David Astor, and Eric Arthur Blair. Better known as George Orwell, the 1984 and Animal Farm author had no real link with the village but chose it as his burial spot.

 

Some of us made a little pilgrimage to see his grave. Chris's app helped us locate the general area but it was the site of a plastic pig on a fairly unremarkable headstone that helped us narrow it down. The pig is obviously a reference to Animal Farm but I wondered why there were also coins (mostly British but one Chinese yuan, Shep added a 50p piece as his own personal tribute), a Joker playing card, and a nut on the grave. Not a nut like peanut or a cashew but a nut as in nut and bolt. No bolt though and it's also worth noting that Orwell is buried under his real name and not his pen name. There will be more Orwell themed walking later this year so watch this spot.

 

 

With the sun now low in the sky, we crossed various bridges and wandered down a selection of alleys over various bits of the river (it breaks into multiple parts here briefly, most notably the Culham Cut) and then followed the path through two or three fields to the edge of Abingdon itself, Chris's home town and a very impressive one at that.

Nag's Head Island sits in the middle of the Thames near the centre of Abingdon and just off Abingdon Bridge. Of course, we stopped for another drink - and a group snap courtesy of yet another Ben - there. Scotland were playing Wales in the Six Nations (they would go on to win 35-29) but not many people were paying much attention to it. More were simply enjoying dusk on the river and we were certainly among them though we couldn't stop long as I'd booked the Dil Raj Indian restaurant for 6.30pm and, not drinking, I was more eager than usual to get there.

 

 

Abingdon looked lovely, and quite lively for a small town, but we didn't get to see much of it. There was a mobility scooter parked outside the surprisingly pleasant looking Wetherspoons (obvs), there was Dorindos where we may have eaten had I not heeded a virtual vegan veto (they let you wear sombreros and the breaded jalapenos look ace), there's a pretty church (St.Helen's), and there's an architecturally impressive former gaol that looks to have been converted into, you guessed it, luxury flats. There's even some Jacobean chimneys! I'd like to come back one day and explore Abingdon in more depth. 

It doesn't sound too challenging a task. Dil Raj was just the ticket. A deceptively expansive joint, plenty of Banglas were ordered though I made do with a solitary mango lassi that passed the straw test in that the straw stood up in it. The selection of pickles was impressive and met with all round approval and my tarka dall, paratha, and pulao rice (the latter shared with Chris) hit the spot though didn't impress me as much as Shep's impressed him. He raved about the 'smoky' tarka daal as passionately as he railed against "dog twats" (people who buy a dog and then lose their social lives), chickens as (indoor) pets, and baths. He hates baths!

Elsewhere we chatted about Ben and Tracy's jetlagged visit to Sydney Opera House a few years back, the food itself, and future walking plans. It was all most agreeable and I'm sure if I'd been drinking I'd have joined some of the others in a second bottle of Bangla.

 

Then, as so often is the case, the day/evening was over all too soon. Chris set off home on foot, Colin and Patricia went to catch the bus to Oxford, Ben and Tracy got a cab, and Pam, Shep, and myself got an Uber to Radley. Eventually. There was some confusion as we thought he was picking us outside Papa John's but instead he pulled up at Dil Raj itself.

We arrived in Radley with half an hour to spare before the train to Didcot Parkway. The others didn't fancy watching me pace up and down the platform in an attempt to get the steps us so we headed to The Bowyer Arms where Shep had an Estrella Galicia (and seemed to win some kind of Estrella lanyard for reasons that never became clear), Pam a gin'n'tonic, and me a half of lemonade.

Then the three of us took the train to Didcot Parkway, Shep singing Depeche Mode's Everything Counts, and changed trains for Reading and Paddington. Shep hopped off at Reading and Pam and I continued to Paddigton where we got the Bakerloo line. She got off at Oxford Circus and I carried on to Waterloo from where I walked to Elephant & Castle and got the 363 bus home.

I got home not long before midnight and I'd set a 2025 step record of 44,267 steps. That was nice but better still was having such a fantastic day. Thanks to Pam, Shep, Colin, Patricia, Chris, Ben, and Tracy for making it so and thanks to Pam, Shep, Colin, and Ben for photos that I have interspersed with my own in this account of the day. The next Thames Path walk will be from Abingdon to Oxford in, hopefully, May but in the meantime there are LbF and TADS walks to get on with. What are you waiting for. Get out there. Go for a walk. See the country. It's really quite beautiful.