Thames Path Ramble 18: Monday 14th March 2016
Windsor to Staines, which is about 7½ miles.
Sue and Jem, Jean, John, Jane, Dot, Julie, Ann, Peter and Sue, Ian and I
have walked this stretch
We started off at a café! Then we walked through Windsor Royal Shopping
Mall. One of the two railway stations has been turned into a lovely light and
roomy shopping centre, still with that railway feel.
From Windsor Great Park we could look back and see the
magnificent fifteen century Eton college chapel.
This was a noisy area as we seemed to be walking under
a flight path for planes landing at Heathrow. Also, there were plenty of
ring-necked parakeets squawking away.
The footpath (and roads in the past) has been
carefully managed around Windsor Park so that you mainly walk on the Datchet
side of the Thames. This means crossing two great bridges; one called Victoria,
the other Albert.
From our picnic spot we could look straight up and
see the low flying passenger aeroplanes coming in to land (an Airbus A380 in the
picture, able to carry up to 850 people?).
It is possible to
have a cruise in the newly refurbished 'Lucy Fisher', a replica of a Victorian
paddle steamer from Runnymede.
We paused again at Runnymede for ice-creams etc. There is a monument
here to the sealing of Magna Carta in 1215 which has been described as ‘the foundation of the freedom of
the individual against the arbitrary authority of the despot’. Much
of the surrounding meadowland, water meadows and woods are owned by National
Trust now and there are other memorials to the struggle for liberty. It is a
lovely open space with wooded hills but far too large for us to explore at this
time.
We ended our walk in Staines, an important river
crossing point since Roman times. It was home to the makers of linoleum until
the 1970s, hence the statue. The Town Hall is empty at the moment but
there are plans to turn the accommodation into apartments.
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