28th June

Blog No 9 Staines to Windsor walk on Friday 27th of June.

This blog is jointly written by Graham and myself, as Graham has already posted on facebook an account of our walk and so I have plagiarised chunks of his script.

We decided to walk on Friday as Graham would be going to Heathrow to pick up his dad from his trip to Scotland. We calculated that if we began our walk by around 3pm we would be in good time to reach the airport for 8pm, the time expected to meet with Michael, Graham's dad. Graham drove to Windsor and parked the car at the station before we caught  the train to Staines to begin our walk. All went smoothly and we began in good spirits around 3.15pm. Thankfully Graham took lots of pictures of our walk. 

This is a picture at the start of our walk, a modernistic stainless steel sculpture of swans in the square at Staines. 

It seemed to take a long time to get out of Staines itself before we really felt we were making progress. After a while the walk became interesting, as we met a woman swimming with her pet Canada Goose off a houseboat. 

Graham took up the story 'there was plenty to see in this section, with sunken boats being recovered  and removed from the river. There were small communities of 'livaboards' and their cats'.

We stopped at some metal chairs opposite houseboats with a sign in the hedge saying 'Naughty Corner'. We were grateful for a sit down to drink water, share the last of Michael's jelly babies, have some nuts and raisons plus peanut butter M and M's. Two cats from one of the houseboats came over to us probably thinking we had food of interest to them. A ten minute break, then we continued our journey. As we walked I found myself able to talk about Elizabeth more freely than ever before. I talked about her choice of a career in music as opposed to studying law. She had a lot of fun and interest in her life being in the 'music' business. I am hoping that as time goes by I will be able to bring Elizabeth into my conversations more often. Although I often talk with Elizabeth I rarely talk about her.  It felt natural and comfortable on the walk as never before. 

Graham was interested in the bridges, 'We crossed under the the concrete arches of the M25 then the impressive brick arches of the A30 road bridge'. Graham told me that this was the longest bridge in the world made completely of brick.

Not long after this we began crossing Runnymede. At Runnymede lock a wall painting had been made of quotations from

the Magna Carta referring to the fact that no man should have his liberty removed without a hearing presided over by a judge. Women weren't mentioned remember this was 1215.

It was a hot walk across Runnymede Meadows with no shade to protect us. We stopped at the National Trust, our luck was in, the loos were open. A little further on we came across an ice cream van, again in luck we had a whippy cornet with chocolate in a shady area. 

I was so grateful to Graham, he had the map on his phone and as we followed the path we crossed over several bridges. I doubt very much that I would have found the path but with Graham in charge of the map we were fine.

It seemed ages walking along single tracks along the side of the Windsor estate. I was concerned that we were running out of time and would be late to pick up Michael. I think Graham was worried that I was flagging. So we pressed on. Graham calculated that we had another 2 and a bit miles to walk and hopefully get to the Car Park around 7. We reached Datchet and had a fair bit of road walking to do before hitting the path again. Eventually we came to the edge of Windsor with the Castle on our left and a campsite on our right. We kept on the road into Windsor with the sun in our faces and made the car park just after 7pm, We were both hot and tired. The Thames book estimated the section from Staines to Windsor was 7 1/2 miles, We walked just over 10 miles confirming our calculation by the time it had taken us to walk from Staines to Windsor. 

Fortunately we were in good time to get to Heathrow and pick up Michael. It was a long afternoon and evening. We left at 1pm and were home at 9.45pm. 

The next section is Windsor to Maidenhead, 6 1/2 miles or so they say. Graham has set me up with Google maps, I am now signed up to Uber and hopefully will manage this walk next week on my own. Anyone care to join me? We are expected to endure another heatwave next week, so I will need to be mindful of the weather.