Wednesday, July 03, 2013

Thames Path 09 - Lower Shiplake to Goring

Lower Shiplake, England. Sunday 30-May-2103

A full-on walk this: nineteen and a half miles at an average speed of 3.5 miles per hour!

http://www.thames-path.org.uk/thames_henley_tilehurst.html (second part)
http://www.thames-path.org.uk/thames_tilehurst_cholsey.html (first part)

We drove to Goring and Streatley rail station, our end point, the afternoon before and took the train to Lower Shiplake where we stayed at The Baskerville Arms - highly recommended. A beer, an excellent meal and an early night.

Away at 09:25 Sunday morning after a full English breakfast with the obligatory team photo, albeit the core team:

Team photo - Mark and Mary

We have been using "The Thames Path" by Leigh Hatts as our guide in conjunction with a laminated map.

Shiplake lock - checking the book
Mary consults the guide

It was a beautiful day for walking, sunshine and loads of meadows. No pub lunch - shock, horror! Instead we dined on a packed lunch prepared for us by The Baskerville Arms.

Thames meadow

Much of the walk was bucolic in the extreme.

Cow and calf

Hardwick House was the original for Toad Hall as its occupant, Sir Charles Rose, was the role model for Toad.

Toad Hall aka Hardwick House

I failed to correctly zeroise the Gamin, fortunately Mary's iPhone (with booster battery) and MapMyRide came to the rescue. The map says 18.23 but the stats say 19.63. The latter accords with the section I did manage to record.

Map my Ride route


Map my Ride stats

Full set of photos on Flickr: http://www.flickr.com/photos/markmclellan/sets/72157634445154685/

Distance this leg 31.6 km
Previous legs 176.8 km
Total so far 208.4 km

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