Author Archives: Geoff

The Thames Path

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After 10 days of walking I completed The Thames Path from its rural source close to Cirencester and its 180+ mile twisty route to the Thames Barrier.

The route encompasses a lot of famous place names associated with Royalty and the English upper classes in fact it could be a tour of them from The palace of Westminster, Hampton Court, Windsor, Eton & Oxford.

Most days I did well over 20miles as the ground is flat, well marked & easy going. My days were:-

Day 1 (May 10th) Ashton Keynes to The Source and back again with Sally who I must thank for the lift :-) I stayed at the good Cove House. Distance about 15 miles.

Day 2 (May 11th) Ashton Keynes to Kelmscott about 21miles I stayed at the excellent Manor Farm with an amazing evening meal at The Plough.

Day 3 (May 12th) Kelmscott to Swinford another 21 miles or so Charles met be en-route and made me a coffee in his stunning house plus giving me lots of tips for my upcoming China trip, thank you :-)
My friend Chris picked me up so I could stay at his house in Abingdon.

Day 4 (May 13) Swinford to Clifton Hamden a 22mile day made possible by Chris picking me up again and providing a seconds night hospitality.

Day 5 (May 14) Clifton Hamden to Goring a short 15 mile day so I could be ready for Sally coming down for the weekend. I met Margaret who is walking bits of the Path over weekends etc.

Day 6 (May 15) Goring to Henley Lovely 21 mile walk with a couple of surprising hills.

Day 7 (May 16) Henley to Windsor/Eton A cracking day of over 23 miles with Sally followed by a meal at Zizzi’s thank you Philip and congratulations on your upcoming wedding :-)

Day 8 (May 17) Eton to Hampton Court A big 24 miler so a tiring day thanks to AroundMe I located the Lionsgate Hotel even though I had no prior booking!

Day 9 (May 18) Hampton Court to Chelsea another 22 miler this time with aching feet :-( Very impressive that the countryside extends so far into London. AroundMe saved me again by finding a cheap hotel in Chelsea, The Oakley the neighbouring Fiamma made me an excellent vegetarian stuffed cannelloni

which brings me to the final day

Day 10 (May19) Chelsea to The Thames Barrier 17 miles to do what a crow could fly in half! Past all the magnificent buildings associated with London, Big Ben, The Globe, Tower Bridge etc etc
All totally awesome except for the nagging pain of two small heel blisters :-( :-( although relieved somewhat by meeting Alwyn & his wife who are planning to walk to Santiago from St Albans, they had just returned from cycling the length of New Zealand having previously crossed Canada and covered fair distances in Australia – amazing the folks you meet when walking.

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More of The Cotswold Way

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Today we started of The Cotswold Way from Wotton Under Edge to Horton returning via Bays wood and open fields to Wotton.

Very hilly for we Cambridge folk but fantastic scenery and the Bays Wood area looking very much like all England did before we started chopping all the trees down!

Here’s the walk on Everytrail:-

Wotton under Edge to Horton circular walk

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18.7 miles done!

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Wotton to Tyndale monument circluar wark

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Here is our first day’s walk in The Cotswolds. A pretty damp day with a cold wind on the tops. Amazing to see and smell the woods filled with wild garlic & bluebells. We still managed a few circles in the woods even with 4 GPS’s between us! As you can see here:-

Wotton to Tyndale Monument circular walk at EveryTrail

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Many thanks to Sally & Ross who are putting us up after staying in my Les Gets apartment this winter.

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Geoff’s travelling gadget bag!

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I spent tonight shortening all my USB cables so that my electronics can pack away neatly.  In the past I have carried a rats nest of cables & Power Supplies with me.

The result of tonight’s endeavours is shown above. It’s now  below 2Kg including the Asus power supply, Garmin GPS, Olympus uTough camera, Eee 4G, rechargeable battery charger & iPhone.

Its always annoyed me that the Olympus cameras come with a separate power supply and cable rather than charging through their USB lead. Tonight, whilst shortening the camera lead I discovered that if I left the green & white wires disconnected then it would charge through the Eee USB port (OK you also need a complete cable to get the pics off).

On the Eee I have a nLite version of XP Pro (About 3GB in size) with GPS Trackmaker for downloading tracks of the Garmin, Picasa for downloading images of the camera and storing locally on a 16GB SD card. GPicSync ties the images to the gpx tracks. I also have MemoryMap with the whole of the UK at 50000:1 plus The Alps and Pyrenees :-) I run CCleaner very frequently to get rid of accumulated crap and keep about 600M free space. It also has iTunes so the iphone can charge and unlocked if anything goes wrong.

So the Thames Path will be the testing ground, at least I will be passing a lot ofelectronic stores if anything goes awry.

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Following river courses to and from their sources!

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Now the business & office is sold. The big house move is behind me
and my other house is renovated and let out it’s time to start
travelling!

Next week, after our weekend in The Cotswolds,  I’m rambling all 184 miles of The Thames Path from its source near Kemble to the Thames barrier, Sally will join me when she can.

In July I hope to cycle my bike back from Les Gets via the source of the Rhine in Reichenau, Switzerland to where it meets the North sea about 800miles!.

Then in October and November I hope to visit the source of The Yangtze  where it originates in a glacier lying on the west of Geladandong Mountain in the Dangla Mountain Range on the eastern part of the Tibetan plateau  although I don’t think I can cycle or walk its entire 3,915 miles!

Afterwards  after travelling by train overland to India. I intend to do the holy trail upto where The Ganges rises at the foot of Gangotri Glacier, at Gaumukh, at an elevation of 3,892 m (12,769 ft) Cathy thinks I should don all the traditional gear of the  Sannyasisi, since I’m over 50 vegetarian and bald :-)

Should all be very interesting to see the major rivers of their respective countries, lets hope my stomach can take the strain.

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Hunting Pingo’s in Norfolk

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Today 10 of us set out, ably led by Ron & Margaret, on the Cambridge Rambling Club’s A team walk. It was a 40 mile trip from Cambridge to the start in Hockham Picnic site car park.

We were out to spot Pingo’s although according to Wikipedia they are actually collapsed Pingo’s although personally I kept thinking of Isla’s favourite cartoon pingu!

A very enjoyable walk with many April showers. Here is the walk on Everytrail:-

Hunting Pingo\’s in Norfolk

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A day in the woods with Cambridge Rambling club

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Today’s Cambridge Rambling Club ‘A’ team ramble was led by Vera. 12 of us set off from Toft (well actually from Gresham Road, Cambridge).

Twas a gorgeous sunny day with lots of blossom on the trees with cowslips and a few bluebells making their 2010 appearance. We wended our way from Toft through Great Eversden, Kingston Wood and then lunch in Bourn churchyard, followed by a drink at the very trendy Willow tree pub where are numbers grew to 13 with the addition of a recent Nobel Prize winner :-) then along Bourn brook and onwards to Hardwick wood.

A great day out and many thanks to Vera to organising it.

Toft Circular Walk with Cambridge Rambling Club at EveryTrail

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Word This in Chrome

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An experiment in using the Word This extension in the Chrome browser.

I started on my Flickr homepage, so this is the link  it auto added to the post

Flickr: Your Photostream.

Now lets add an image

Wow that was neat! & quick

Seems pretty good for adding posts about a website.

However, it seems to lose the post if you change the webpage mid stream :-(

One thing about Chrome is the extensions are installed instantly! So far I’ve added XMarks, Lazarus, Evernote, Google Mail and of cause Word This.

Maybe I will convert from Firefox which seems to be getting slow and crashes quite often…..

ps I forgot to add a title :-( it defaulted to the inserted link, manually changed it now

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Bradfield Wood circular walk with Cambridge Rambling Club

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Today we were back with the Cambridge Rambling Club A team for a walk led by Debbie. It was a bit of a jaunt to the starting place, 35miles from Cambridge! but 17 of us made it to the start. With me giving my shorts the first airing of the year!.

Twas a glorious spring day with a cold wind, spring is well upon us now in evidence with the lambs & kids in the fields plus all the blossom and the leaves starting to appear,  In fact as the day went on it seemed more blossom was appearing by the minute.

Lunch was at Beyton which interestingly still has a 1950′s kids playground with the original Wicksteed roundabout and swings all of which are distant memories in Cambridge, due to the health & safety gestapo prohibiting them!

An interesting walk especially seeing the coppicing in action at Bradfields Wood, although the products seemed quite expensive to me, Hazel bean poles at £8.75 for 10 and Hazel pea sticks at £4.25 a bunch!

Here is the walk on Everytrail. Poor Debbie was a bit upset that the walked turned out slightly longer than her little map measuring wheel had indicated!

Bradfields Woods circular walk

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Walking childhood memories around Creswell Crags

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This weeks walk was a visit to my childhood adventure playground of The Welbeck and Clumber estates. After school in the 50′s when I was probably 8+, Stan and I would take off on our rickety bikes and charge around these grand country estates to be chased by gamekeepers and angry young lovers who we disturbed :-) We also explored the many tunnels on the Welbeck estate, later on I hung out with the guys who sailed Enterprises on the Welbeck lake plus we got to meet the grand old Duke himself once, a charming guy in his beat up Morris Minor!

This Sunday it was a far more sedate walk with Sally and Renata, I was pleased to see that Welbeck is as well fenced of as ever, although my guess is no kids now stray that far after school from Creswell! Creswell Crags is totally transformed, the sewage works installed in 1952 has disappeared to be replaced by an uber modern Cafe/museum/visitors centre that proudly proclaims folks have been visiting Creswell for 50,000 years :-)   The only miners in Creswell now are young kids (minors) with all the safety kit on to explore the caves we once hung out in.

A very enjoyable day out traipsing on the newly laid red ash paths, ironically made from the ash created by the old pit tips burning with all the smoke/smell pollution we endured as kids. Renata did really well doing the 19 or so miles on her first ever long walk with no blisters or aches & pains. Sally had an enjoyable day out to, her first 15+ miles day of the year!

Here’s the walk with pictures of the many fine gate house lodges etc,

Clumber Park – Creswell Crags circular walk

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