Next September we’ll walk with two friends along the Thames Path from Oxford ① to its source ⑥ over five days. Today I booked our hotels. Some are quite small (one has just four rooms) and few and far between. One was already booked up, so we had to juggle with dates.
I love how UK Ordnance Survey Maps carry so much detail without looking cluttered. For example, you can tell if a church has a tower or spire, or if a railroad is below or above grade. Today I prepared maps for an upcoming multi-day hike with friends from Oxford, England to the source of the Thames. The maps will be printed and also loaded into a location-aware app on my phone.
Researched places for lunch for each day of our upcoming multi-day hike from Oxford to the source of the River Thames and plotted them on our trail map. Remarkably there’s a place for each day, and they’re all pubs. Of course there’s a Red Lion, a White Hart, and a Ye Olde Swan. (Numbered pins are overnight stops, purple pins are pubs serving lunch.)
MSP, gate G9, soon to board for London LHR. Thunderstorms are brewing bringing back memories of a rather alarming aborted landing in Tokyo due to thunderstorm-related downdrafts. We accumulate our experiences.
After way too much walking in London, we retreated to our home for the next few nights: Goodenough College, a postgraduate residence. Meals are served in the Great Hall (we’re only having breakfast here). Our room is more spacious but less expensive than a typical hotel room, with a private bathroom, sitting area, and a lovely view of the quadrangle.
We took a train out of London to the Thames Barrier, an enormous structure that protects London from flooding when there’s a tidal surge from the North Sea. The Barrier also marks one end of the 180-mile Thames Path to the river’s source. Next week we’ll hike the path from Oxford to the source, inn-to-inn, over several days.
At the Victoria & Albert Museum it was Digital Design Weekend. Here, museum visitors are on a date with a difference. They’re communicating via phones using language restricted by AI. Meanwhile another AI system is generating social media comments on how the date is going. Elsewhere, machines creating water colors inspired me to imagine the design of a painting machine built with LEGO.
Compared notes about our day over dinner and suds at The Lamb round the corner from Goodenough College where we’re staying in the David Copperfield suite. This small Victorian pub was good enough for Charles Dickens who lived nearby, and it was definitely good enough for us. Dwight spent much of his day exploring the British Museum, while I caught up with a friend in Fleet, about an hour outside of London.
At Kings Cross we paused for a selfie, then took the tube to Paddington to catch a train to Oxford to join friends for our hike to the source of the Thames. Somehow, instead of one tube train, we took four trains, or maybe it was five trains as we compounded our navigation errors.
The start of today’s hike west from Oxford was positively bucolic. Soon we were reminded of the flooding that has occurred in these parts. At one point we even walked in our bare feet for a short distance. At Ferryman Inn, our destination for the night, warm showers and pub grub revived us.
View of the Thames from our window this morning, swollen and discolored from runoff from recent unusually intense rainfall. We’ve pretty much abandoned the Thames Path, instead finding alternative trails that were usually less flooded and presented fine sights, including traditional thatched cottages. My back muscles tell me tomorrow will be a mandatory day of rest for me
We’ve all but abandoned the Thames Path, having faced impossible flooding. Instead we renamed our hike The Thames Path Diversion Hike and took a cab to the next inn on the itinerary where we dumped our backpacks. From there we hiked on dry land and in sunshine to William Morris’s country home. Back at our room, we spotted this print on the wall depicting travelers more intrepid than us.
When it’s contained, the Thames is now quite narrow, but unusually deep, up to the arch of this bridge. When it’s not contained, entire fields are flooded. Here, children are enjoying leaf races, each dropping a leaf into the fast-flowing water from one side of the bridge and then racing to the other side to see whose leaf makes it first under the bridge.
To reach our final destination, the Thames Head Inn, we planned a route that bypassed areas with substantial flooding. Along the way, we encountered glimpses of the Thames, a distant relative to the mighty river we’d seen at the Thames Barrier earlier in our trip.
With the Thames Path Diversion hike successfully accomplished, it was time to start planning another inn-to-inn hike and go our separate ways. Our friends headed back to their homes in the north and south of England, while Dwight and I took three trains and a bus to a seaside town on the Dorset coast for a few days of day hiking and relaxation.
On our walk into town, we admired a playground where all the equipment imaginatively incorporated rope. This area has a rich history of rope-making for shipping, executions, and more, dating back to the 13th century. Rope was sometimes produced exclusively here for the entire kingdom by royal decree. To commemorate this important industry we enjoyed a beer and a bag of crisps at the Ropemakers Arms.
We’re staying on the Jurassic Coast of Dorset, where the cliffs are constantly eroding, revealing formations and fossils from different geologic periods. Today, we hiked the cliffs west of where we’re staying. This turned out to be a good workout as we navigated the trail up and down. Another day, we’ll explore the eastern cliffs.
Walked east along the coast, past this clifftop burning beacon. The beacon aligns with another we saw yesterday. These structures have been used since Roman times to signal danger, but nowadays, they’re lit to celebrate events like the new millennium or the Queen’s Platinum Jubilee in 2022.
Took a bus to Weymouth, resisting the typical seaside allure. Instead, I walked to Nothe Fort, a large 19th-century fortification built to protect against a French invasion. It served during both World Wars and the Cold War, even housing a nuclear bunker in the 1980s. Weymouth played a significant role 80 years ago on D-Day, serving as an embarkation point for American troops heading to Omaha Beach.
Turnaround point on our final cliff hike. Tomorrow we start our journey home with a hike into town, then a bus, then a train, then a bus to Heathrow where we’ll check into a hotel for the night before our flight home.
Waited at Bridport Bus Station for a bus to Axminster where we would catch a train. Rain seemed set in for the day, a first on our trip and a good reason to be in transit. Until recently I thought Axminster was a brand or style of carpet, but now I know it’s also a town with a train station and a surprisingly quiet town center on a Sunday.
Dwight’s carrying grocery bags of fresh produce we picked up at Trader Joe’s on the way from the LRT station. After over two weeks on the road, we are a little deficient in the fresh produce department.
