Have covered the 'middle' 90 miles of the Thames Path a couple of years ago, I felt it was high time I topped and tailed it. Having done the middle bits as a series of day walks, it made more sense to tackle the remainder as a series (three!) of multi-day walks.
The first of these three walks covered the roughly 40 miles from Marlow Lock down to Teddington Lock (where the Thames becomes tidal). There is just one more lock downstream of Teddington, at Richmond - but I must confess that I don't understand how a lock works without blocking the tide - maybe I'll figure that out on the next bit of the walk.
The character of the river down here is very different to the river further upstream - the river is much wider for a start, and the banks are very different. Upstream there is lots of farmland, downstream there is a mix of parkland and buildings. The banks are often lined with expensive houses with their own moorings and big boats - or with boat houses that probably also contain expensive boats. In other places the bank is filled with houseboats. One of the other features down here - it that the river is big enough to have it's own islands, often with both houses and 'keep out' signs. The locals are clearly very possessive of their bits of river bank - with signs ranging from the passive aggressive to the plain aggressive, from the low tech "Beware of the Dog" or even "Beware of the Dogs" to the high tech "Grounds protected by CCTV and Laser Monitoring".
The Thames Path also has to negotiate the local land ownership complications - there's a lot of "Crown Estate" to be avoided - over my three days walking I has to cross the river nine times (8 times by bridge, and once by boat), but at least the waymarking is good.
The walk split into three tidy (equal length!) chunks - the first day ending at Windsor, and the second ending at Chertsey, in both cases with a convenient pub or hotel (The George in Eton, and The Bridge in Chertsey.
Day 1 Marlow to Windsor
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| Starting Point: Marlow Wier |
Picking up from March 2018 - the river seems to be much more meandering than I'd remembered - my phone kept insisting that I wasn't far from my destination - but the signposts kept insisting that I still had a long way to go along the river bank. There is only one stretch, on this bit of the river, when the path gets diverted 'inland' through Cookham rather than being able to follow the river directly.
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| Boulters Lock, Maidenhead (one of 14 locks on this bit of the Thames) |
I was both relieved and thirsty by the time that Windsor Castle appeared in the distance as I walked across The Borcas (on the Eton side of the river).
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| Windsor Castle from the Borcas |
Day 2 Windsor to Chertsey
The biggest surprise of Day 2 was the weather - cloudless blue skies hadn't been factored into the plan, so I was carrying waterproof and but not sunscreen!
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| Romney Lock, Windsor |
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| Blue skies over the Thames |
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| Ideal day for messing about on a boat |
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| Chertsey Wier |
Day 3 Chertsey to Teddington
The big question of Day 3 - after the question about whether I wanted a full cooked breakfast - was would the little Weybridge-Shepperton ferry across the river be running early on a Sunday morning to save me from the long (and not v scenic trudge to rejoin the main Thames Path at Walton-on-Thames). For the record, the answer to both questions was yes. I don't think I've ever knowingly turned down a boat trip - or a cooked breakfast, probably.
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| More river traffic on Sunday |
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| Molesey Wier |
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| Thames Ditton Island |
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| Teddington Lock |
Marlow to Teddington (60km) is a decent three day meander, and it leaves plenty of time for stopping and taking pictures.
Next time: down the Tideway, through the centre of London, towards the sea and more specifically the Thames Barrier.
