Walking the Thames

   We wanted to do a hike in England but wanted to avoid hills. Hills make us huff and puff which makes it impossible to enjoy the scenery. Someone suggested we hike along the Thames River which is perfectly flat, so I started researching that option.   

   It’s 185 miles from the source of the Thames to London. Most people don’t hike all the way to the sea because the river gets super wide east of London. Some people do the path in ten days by hiking 18 miles per day. We wanted to spend five days walking ten miles per day which meant we’d only get as far as the city of Oxford. Then we decided we wanted to visit Wales as part of our trip. That meant we should start in Oxford and walk upstream, then nip over to Wales and start a tour there, presumably using motorized transport.

   We flew to London on a Sunday and arrived early Monday morning, We caught a train to Paddington Station and rubbed Paddington the Bear’s bronze hat for luck. We dropped our bags at our hotel nearby and took a long walk since we couldn’t check in till three.

  Next morning we rolled our bags back to Paddington to catch the train to Oxford where we would be starting our walk. Oxford is an interesting place. We took a guided walking tour of the colleges and absorbed some history. Our inn was next to an ancient pub where celebrities like C.S. Lewis and Bill Clinton had drunk ale.

  After breakfast at the inn, we set off on the mile hike to the river, leaving our bags for our tour company to haul ten miles up the road to the Ferryman’s Inn located in the middle of nowhere. 

   We walked through the busy streets of Oxford  back to the station to find the access to the Thames. The normal path to the river was blocked by construction but the tour company had warned us of that and directed us to the next upstream access point to the river. 

   The path along the Thames is a National Path. The path was smooth hard packed dirt about five feet wide. If only the whole path was like that. Oxford is a large city but we were soon in the countryside seeing the first of the many hundreds of cows and sheep along our route. 

  We crossed a bridge and passed a ruined abbey. There would be many more ruined buildings generally built in the Middle Ages and then destroyed by Henry VIII when he switched the country from Catholic to Protestant. 

  A little further up the path we came to our first lock. There are 45 locks on the Thames which make the river navigable for small cabin cruisers and the classic narrow boats that putt along at two miles per hour. The locks we saw were hand operated. Some had keepers and others were do-it-yourself. 

  Resting on a bench at the lock was a fellow walker carrying a large backpack. She was walking to the source like us but had started in London two weeks earlier. She was carrying all her gear but was staying at inns every night. It turned she was booked into the same inns we were, so we got to know her well. Ann turned out to be the highlight of our walk. She was British, and when asked, told us she was 83 and had done a number of solo walks like this around Britain. 

   Our tour company recommended a restaurant for lunch about a half mile off the river. Ann said she always snacked on nuts and raisins for lunch and had a big breakfast and supper to compensate. We had to walk along a narrow busy road with overhanging branches that forced us to bend down as we walked. Lunch was good, but after that we adopted Ann’s method. 

   We had covered our ten miles around three pm. We were very glad to relax at the Ferryman and were also glad we hadn’t opted for any more miles. Day One done. Four to go. These inns all serve hearty meals and we joined Ann for supper to discuss the joys of the open road. 

R&R at the Ferryman