A lovely Walk in Oxfordshire

One small problem with trying to walk a National Trail in summer is your accommodation trailside is kind of slim.  As in, book a few weeks ahead.  Or a month.  Or several months.   Or be prepared to sleep outside.

With that in mind, I took the train to Goring and Strealey station in Oxfordshire to walk a bit of the Thames path and some surrounding countryside up by Goring Gap.  A day trip of sorts, with my trusty book of walks in hand.

This area was moneyed.  Thameside mansions and estates were the name of game here.

And houseboats!  I do love a houseboat.

It was great birdwatching- I probably saw a dozen red kites circling lazily along the river, dozens of songbirds and a huge variety of water foul.

It was a warm, muggy day, but the trail followed an old towpath and was mostly treed in now, so the shade was nice.  

You still see odd artifacts of fortification protecting old railroad bridges and hillsides here, like this pillbox.

But mostly, gorgeous old trees.  You could tell the area was moneyed because there was less agriculture and livestock, more horses.  And not shabby ones either.

The trail ascends steeply through Goring Gap- a hillside that glacier melt cut through during the last ice age.  It's the one hill on the trail, and it was steep enough for mountain bikers to be walking their bikes down the hill.  Supposedly it's a gorgeous view from the top, but the foliage was so thick you couldn't even get a glimpse.

From there, we left the Thames and started walking through the countryside.

Our book had told us about a Pub a half mile off the trail.  We made for it but we were horrified to learn that it was still called the "King Charles Head", but it was now a private residence.  Herein lies the problem using a 10 year old guide book.

We walked into the tiny hamlet of Mapledurham.  I was looking forward to sitting and grabbing a cold drink in the cafe, but then I found out that just walking around the town and going to the cafe was going to put me out a few quid.  Seriously!

It's an estate on the Thames with a long history of harbouring Catholics in times of anti-catholic sentiment.  A beautiful little 13th-century church, a mansion, and a watermill comprised the estate.  

Kenneth Grahame supposedly based Toad Hall here in Wind in the Willows.  He's a local folk hero and he's buried nearby.

But, lo!  What was this commotion in a nearby field?

Doggy Agility!

We hit it at the tail-end (ahem) and only saw a couple dogs run through, but they had fresh water taps and a lovely ice cream vendor and a Thameside bank to plant one-selves.

Take that, Mister Toad!

While we carry plenty of water, we're careful to ration out what we have for the day until we hit a tap, and then I realize how friggin thirsty I was as I downed a litre.

Much, much better.  Also, I didn't realize I would be going through bottles of SPF 50 here, but I have.

Back on the trail, more farmland.  Really fancy horse farms.

I came across this little farmstand and bought some garlic on the honor system, since they were out of strawberries and garlic seemed to be the most portable option.

And then- an huge alpaca farm.  Hundreds of freshly shorn alpacas of all colors dotting the hillsides.

Finally, we made our exit at Pangbourne.  There's a bridge across the Thames here that is currently just a footbridge, as they are replacing the Whitechurch bridge.  We had a bit of a panic when we saw the construction barges and no discernible way to get across, as it would have been another 4 miles back to Goring Streatley Station.  Happily, they had a pedestrian walk way set up across the river.

We found a fancy pub on the riverside called The Swan.  Although the pub itself was ancient, it was a conglomerate-owned renovated place, but ofttimes that means the food is a bit better than normal, and this place was fairly good.  We ended up sitting riverside, drinking a bottle of wine and eating our Sunday dinner here.  The walk, although fairly flat, was a pretty challenging 12 miles of sunny warm hiking.

A lovely way to spend a Sunday.

Oxford, where dreams go to die

Another rainy weekend.  What to do?  

The Answer is Oxford.

It's a fairly adorable Univeristy Town, with spires erupting out of the earth at every turn.  Grand old colleges, stodgy old institutions.  They are all here.

I got a smattering of rain, but it seemed like it might clear, or at the very least not be the kind of rain that would soak you to the skin underneath your rain gear.

St Mary's, the oldest church in Oxford.  For a few quid, you can climb the bell tower and squeeze yourself past tourist in a single-file staircase.  Still, good for a view to orient yourself.

I made a mistake of going on an Easter Sunday though, and pretty much all the museums and events were closed, and all the residents were on their spring break.  It was very quiet.  A few of the colleges were open to stroll around, and until it got too wet out, I was happy to wander the streets and peek my head inside.

I'm sure there is reason behind why they have a copy of the Venetian Bridge of Sighs here.

So with nothing much open and the rain pouring down, I had no choice but to duck into a very old charming public house to warm myself with the ghost of Lewis Carroll and Tolkien.

I did find some lovely gardens and courtyards tucked into the walls of some of the colleges.

I did happen upon the Ashmolean museum, which was basically the only thing in town that was open.  A very decent collection, they had.  Lots of artifacts and scholarly things.

Carfax tower.  There used to be a church attached, but the road got built instead.  Now it is just a lone, oddly place tower.

There was a huge long line and a fee to get into Christ Church Cathedral.  They filmed scenes of Hogwart's there in the Harry Potter films, so it was the only place I saw with lines and crowds, and they were capitalizing on it heartily.  I didn't go in.  I went for a walk around the grounds instead.

I did see some deer grazing.  See?  bottom lefthand corner.  Kind of cool, considering this was right outside a pretty big town.

I guess if school was in session, it would have been a bit more lively and fun to hang out in, but the rain and the closed shops and museums was kind of discouraging.

In the end, the weather won out and I was getting a little tired of being soaked.  Instead of staying for dinner and to explore more pubs and have myself a literary pub crawl, I hopped the "Oxford Tube", a double-decker bus that runs about every 15 minutes between London Victoria and Oxford.  The whole journey takes about an hour and a half, but it is traffic-dependent, so good luck with that.